


On Paper Wings

by Crunchysunrises



Series: A Thousand Quiet Moments [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Community: fic_promptly, Community: trope_bingo, Female Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, InoShikaCho, Male-Female Friendship, New Years, Trope Bingo Round 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:57:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crunchysunrises/pseuds/Crunchysunrises
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes Sakura one thousand cranes to discover the wish in her heart, struggling to be born. It takes Itachi a thousand cranes to find the courage to articulate the wish in his heart, even to himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elle Blessingway (elle_blessing)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_blessing/gifts), [Aquerna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aquerna/gifts).



> **Title:** On Paper Wings  
>  **Fandom:** Naruto  
>  **Rating:** G  
>  **Content Notes:** None  
>  **Disclaimer:** I have no rights to or within the Naruto franchise, copyright, character or trademark. This is for fun, not profit.  
>  **Summary:** It takes Sakura one thousand cranes to discover the wish in her heart, struggling to be born. It takes Itachi a thousand cranes to find the courage to articulate the wish in his heart, even to himself.  
>  **Additional Notes:** This fic fills the "unrequited pining" square on my Hurt/Comfort Bingo card and the "unrequited love/pining" square on my trope bingo card.  
> 

Itachi and his friend's departure from the restaurant coincided with the end of the breakfast rush. As soon as they were gone, Sakura wrenched off her apron and shouted, "Mom! I'm going to the flower shop! I'll be back soon!"

Sakura ran out of the tea stand without even waiting for her mother's response.

Ino and her dad were right where Sakura had expected them to be on a Saturday: working in the Yamanaka Flower Shop. When Sakura told Ino's dad what she had overheard in her mother's restaurant, his jaw tightened and, just for a moment, Sakura understood why so many of her classmates feared Ino. In that moment, Ino's dad looked _scary._

Then the scariness disappeared like it had never been. Ino's dad thanked Sakura for her information and strongly suggested that she go straight home and talk to no one else about what she had overheard.

"Here," Ino said as Sakura moved towards the shop's front door. She thrust an armful of pink and red azaleas into Sakura's arms. Then she added a few handfuls of white azaleas for good measure. "The leaves are horribly poisonous. If anyone threatening comes around, put a few leaves in their tea and the medic nin'll sort them out later."

"Okay," Sakura said, her voice shaking. For the first time, the danger in what she had overheard seemed real and like it might come back and kill her and her mom. Ino gave Sakura a careful hug across the flowers then tucked a spring of little yellow agrimony flowers behind Sakura's ear. As she gently pushed Sakura out of the shop, Ino said to her father, "They keep vases of flowers on their tables and counter tops. Sakura is in charge of them. People will believe that she just came for new flowers, right?"

What, if anything, Ino's father might have said to that, Sakura did not know. The door swung shut between herself and Ino, who hesitated in front of it long enough to flip the sign on the door from 'Open!' to 'Closed'.

Feeling small and alone in a large, threatening world, Sakura hurried back to her mother's restaurant as quickly as she could without losing any of her azaleas or the agrimony. Once inside the stand, she shouted a greeting to her mother, dumped her flowers onto the counter, and hastily changed out the flowers and water in the vases with shaking hands. She dropped everything at least twice but, fortunately, broke nothing. Even more fortunately, there was no one in the restaurant to witness her nerves or clumsiness.

"Sakura?" asked her mother, who was standing at the pass through window between the counter and the kitchen. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Sakura lied, remembering Ino's dad's admonishment. She willed her hands to steady. "Do you think Itachi will come back today? He didn't look good when he left."

Her mother's expression softened. "Probably not, dear."

"Oh," Sakura said, sounding sad even to her own ears. If Itachi came back, maybe she could talk him out of killing anyone. The azaleas were for scary bad people, not Itachi. "I wish he would."

On the other hand, if she poisoned Itachi then he'd be too sick to kill anyone. Sakura wished that she had thought to ask Ino and her dad about that while she was still at the flower shop.

_Not that it matters,_ Sakura thought as she shoved a couple of stems into a vase. At least her stupid hands had stopped shaking. _Because he probably won't come back today. Maybe not ever._

Sakura wished that she had thought to ask Ino's dad not to hurt Itachi.

Remembering how scary Ino's dad had looked, Sakura scrupulously inspected each and every customer for scariness throughout the rest of the day. But no one particularly scary came to the shop that day or during the day after it.

On Monday, none of the clans' kids were at school. The only people in Sakura's class were the civilian kids like her. The teacher, who looked pale and uncomfortable, taught the class like all thirty of his students were there instead of the mere eight that were actually in attendance. Lessons and lunch times were suddenly a lot more lonely again but on the bright side Sakura no longer had to wait in line for a turn on the kunai range. During practices, everyone got to have his or her own target.

The only other thing that changed was that suddenly there were a lot more Yamanaka, Akimichi, and Nara eating at the tea stand, which certainly made Sakura's mama happy.

One night, when she was feeling less unsettled about the things that were probably going on somewhere else in the village, Sakura looked up the meaning behind the azaleas and the sprig of agrimony. The azaleas had lots of meanings but Sakura settled on 'Take care', 'gratitude', and the more subtle underlying death threat (towards non-Sakura ninja, of course) as the messages that Ino had most likely meant.

The sprig of agrimony, which Sakura's books had said meant 'thankfulness', was a withered and dry husk by the time that Ino's father came by the restaurant. He stood in line, placed his order with Sakura, and quietly claimed a seat at the counter. Ino's dad ate riceballs, sipped chilled green tea, and studied the newest blooms. When the azaleas that Ino had given Sakura had withered, Sakura had carefully tucked away a few dried leaves and replaced them with pink carnations from another flower shop. The Yamanaka Flower Shop was currently closed and not even Sakura was brazen enough to steal armfuls of flowers from the public gardens.

Ino's dad patiently waited until it was only him, Sakura, and Sakura's mama in the shop before he asked to speak with them. Then he added, "It's about Itachi," and Sakura's heart leaped in her chest.

"What about Itachi?" asked Sakura's mother as she came through the doorway between the kitchen and the counter.

"This is not yet common knowledge," Ino's dad warned them. "Say nothing of what I am about to tell you to anyone."

Sakura nodded and, from the corner of her eye, she saw her mother do the same.

Then Ino's dad explained to her mama some of the things that Sakura had told him - that there was a secret ANBU group called Root, it was loyal to someone named Lord Danzo instead of the Hokage, and that the Uchiha clan was unhappy so they were going to rebel. He also told Sakura's mama that Sakura had heard Itachi and his cousin discussing all of this and had told on them to him.

Sakura wished that he had not mentioned that part. It was bad enough that she had told. Ino's father did not need to tell everyone that she had. She wondered uneasily if he had told Itachi and then immediately hoped not.

"Unfortunately, Itachi believed that the purpose of Root was to ultimately serve the Hokage and protect the village, not to serve Danzo's personal ambitions," Ino's dad said, finally saying something that Sakura did not already know. "He went against his clan and betrayed them to Lord Danzo because he believed that he was protecting the village by reporting the Uchiha's growing dissatisfaction to his superiors. His motivations were good, even if he placed his trust in the wrong people."

"So Itachi's not in trouble?" Sakura asked hopefully and Ino's dad smiled and shook his head. Delighted, Sakura beamed at him as the lingering tightness in her chest eased. She had been terribly worried about Itachi.

"But he's not well," Ino's dad added. "Itachi was interrogated early yesterday morning and cleared of all charges. Since then, he has laid unmoving in a hospital bed. We're hoping that the sound of familiar voices will encourage him to respond."

"Itachi knows us really well! We'll come talk to him!" Sakura immediately offered then asked, _"Can_ we go visit Itachi, mama?"

"Yes, of course," her mother agreed. "Sakura, box up some dango and Itachi's favorite onigiri. I'll make him some miso soup and a thermos of spiced orange tea and then we'll go."

Sakura added a pink carnation to Itachi's order. She pretended not to see Ino's dad's raised eyebrows. Like the azalea, the carnation had many meanings. Sakura had chosen it to tell Itachi that she loved him and he was always on her mind. Ino's dad probably guessed that, too.

When they arrived at the secret ANBU hospital, the woman in the animal mask who was standing behind the front desk told Ino's dad that Itachi had broken a medic nin's hand and locked himself in the bathroom. Apparently, he had been in the shower since then.

Even though Itachi was probably going to be in trouble for breaking the medic nin's hand, Ino's dad still took Sakura and her mama to see Itachi in his hospital room. Itachi's hospital room was empty and cold with nothing to show that anyone, much less Itachi, was staying in there. Through the bathroom door, Sakura could hear that the shower was still running.

It took a very long time to persuade Itachi to get out of the shower and come out. When he did, Itachi looked _awful._ Even though there was not a single mark on him, Itachi's empty expression was enough to make Sakura cry.

"It's not your fault, Sakura," said Sakura's mama after they left Itachi's room. Her hand was warm against Sakura's back. "He's just having a rough time of it. When Itachi is feeling better, he'll know that you did the right thing and he'll forgive you."

"I don't want Itachi to be mad at me!" Sakura sniffled miserably between hiccuping sobs.

"You didn't do anything wrong," her mother repeated firmly. "Just give Itachi enough time to realize that. Then this'll all blow over."

Since Itachi always needed lots of time to think about things, Sakura was cheered by the idea that, after he had thought things through, everything would go back to the way that it had always been between them.

 

 

The next day, Sakura's mother was too busy with work to go and visit Itachi.

"But you can go by yourself," said her mother as she boxed up another care package for Itachi. ""Visiting an ANBU hospital is probably a lot like visiting the police station. There will be lots of people there who can protect you and help you if you need it."

Sakura decided not to tell her mother that Itachi was in ANBU or that the people who had put him in the hospital were probably ANBU agents too. Civilians trusted ANBU to protect them and the Hokage. Ninja, even if they were ninja-in-training like Sakura, knew enough to know that ANBU agents did more than just protect the village and the Hokage. Even Ino was afraid of masked ANBU agents.

But Itachi was with the ANBU agents. Sakura could be brave for Itachi.

On her way to the secret ANBU hospital, Sakura visited one of the public gardens to steal a white rose. She carefully cut off all of the rose's thorns with one of her practice kunai before she continued on her way to the hospital.

"Hello," Sakura squeaked at the ANBU behind the desk. Her heart was pounding. "I-I'm here to see Itachi. Uchiha Itachi, I mean."

The ANBU inclined his head towards the corridor that she and her mother had walked down the day before. Sakura thought that it might be permission to go and see Itachi but, just to be sure, she asked, "Can I go see him now?"

At the ANBU's nod, Sakura scuttled down the indicated hallway.

When she got to Itachi's room, however, Sakura discovered that Itachi was asleep and her pink carnation was nowhere to be seen. Disappointed, Sakura put the food and the rose on the rolling tray next to Itachi's bed. Then she plopped into the visitor's seat near the bed.

Itachi did not stir.

Sakura waited as long as she could before she had to leave.

_Don't worry, Itachi,_ Sakura thought as she slipped out of the room as quietly as she could manage. _I'll come back and see you tomorrow._

 

 

That night, while she lay in bed cuddling her faithful tiger, Sakura thought about Itachi and his empty hospital room. There were no balloons or flowers or cards. There were no books or changes of clothes or stuffed animals.

_Maybe Itachi still feels bad because he's lonely. But what can I do to make Itachi feel better when I always miss seeing him?_ Sakura wondered. _What makes me feel better? Ino. Shikamaru. Choji. Mama. Tiger. I could give Itachi my tiger._

Sakura had owned her stuffed tiger doll for as long as she could remember. It was old, worn in some places, and patched in others. The tiger's orange fur had faded, it had stains from some of Sakura's adventures, and she slept with it every night. But the tiger was still warm and soft and the perfect size to snuggle with. Sakura slept with her tiger doll every night.

_If I give Tiger to Itachi, I'll miss Tiger a lot. And what will I sleep with?_ Sakura thought unhappily, her arms tightening around her stuffed animal. _But if I don't, Itachi might stay sad forever._

Sakura did not want Itachi to stay sad forever. Her mind made up, Sakura finally drifted off to sleep.

The next day, Sakura went to visit Itachi again. She brought with her more food from her mama, a sunflower (stolen from the public gardens), and her faithful Tiger.

Itachi was still in his hospital room and still sleeping but the food (and the flower) that Sakura had left for him the day before was gone. Sakura was sad to see that the flower had disappeared but she was happy that Itachi had eaten his food. Cheered, Sakura put her get well gifts on the rolling tray, sat with Itachi for awhile, and eventually had to leave.

_I hope that you feel better soon, Itachi,_ Sakura thought as she tiptoed out of the room. _See you tomorrow!_

 

 

It was difficult to get to sleep without Tiger. Nothing felt right in her arms. Everything was too hard or too soft or the wrong shape.

_But it'll be worth being uncomfortable if Itachi gets better,_ Sakura reminded herself as she experimented with hugging her blanket. It was too limp. When Sakura finally fell asleep, she was cuddling her pillow.

The next day, the ANBU at the secret hospital's front desk would not let Sakura past the desk. She told Sakura that Itachi had left with his brother and one of his cousins earlier that day. Excited, Sakura raced all the way back to the tea shop. Maybe she had just missed Itachi and he was waiting for her at the restaurant's counter!

"Has Itachi been here?" Sakura demanded as soon as she cleared the heavy hanging cloths across the front of the stall. Sakura was gasping for breath.

"Not yet, dear," her mother said. "Is he supposed to be here?"

"Itachi left the hospital this morning!"

"I'm glad!" her mother said and smiled brightly.

Sakura spent the rest of the afternoon and evening waiting for Itachi in an agony of excitement.

He never came.

"Cheer up," her mother said comfortingly as they locked up the stand. "Itachi was probably tired after the excitement of going home. I'm sure that he'll be by tomorrow or the next day."

"I hope so," Sakura said morosely.

Itachi did not come the next day or the day after that. He did not come that week or the next.

At school, Sakura became sharp and impatient more often than not. In the restaurant, she was curt and rarely smiled. And at home, she mostly hid in her room and brooded. Sakura, who was still cuddling a pillow in Tiger's place, had trouble sleeping at night. She also began to fold a great many cranes, not that Sakura noticed until her mother pointed it out to her.

"Not that I mind," her mother added. "But it's a little monotonous when every napkin in the restaurant is folded in the same shape, especially since I know that you can fold so many different animals."

"Oh," said Sakura, who was staring at her prep work. She had indeed folded every paper napkin that she had touched into a crane. "I hadn't noticed."

"I didn't think that you had," her mother said sympathetically. "Maybe you have a secret wish in your heart of hearts that is struggling to be born."

It was an old legend that if you made a thousand paper cranes within a year's time and, on the last day of the year, hung all one thousand paper cranes outside, then the deepest wish in your heart of hearts would be released into the world. Hopefully, it would come true.

"Maybe," Sakura echoed. She fingered one of her creations. "Mama, may I go buy some origami paper?"

"Of course," said her mother as she left the pass through window, presumably to go rummage in her purse for money. "But Sakura, we can't afford one thousand sheets of orgami paper."

"I know," Sakura lied. "I just need to know what size to cut my paper."

"We can't afford a thousand sheets of paper, either," her mother said as she reappeared at the window. "Or even a few hundred."

"I'll think of something," Sakura promised as her mother passed her a fistful of coins. "I'll be right back!"

Sakura ran down the street to her favorite stationary shop. Along the way, she passed a news stand. The bright, glossy images on the front of the magazines, each designed to capture a viewer's eye, gave Sakura a wonderful idea. She stopped at the newsstand long enough to flip through the magazines under the shop owner's weary eye and eventually purchased the prettiest, most colorful magazine that she could find, which happened to be a fashion magazine. Then Sakura continued on to the stationary shop where she carefully perused the origami packages and discovered that she could still afford a pack of fifty origami sheets.

Treasures clutched to her chest, Sakura ran back to her mother's shop.

Since business was still dead, Sakura was allowed to sit in front of the counter and work on her project. She carefully pried the staples out of the center of the magazine, laid the pages flat, and laid a sheet of her precious origami paper over the top page of the magazine, corner to corner. Then she traced around it using the fine-tipped black marker that she and her mother used to write happy messages on top of takeout boxes. Sakura traced as many squares as possible onto each extra long sheet of magazine paper and then let her mother cut them out for her with the enormous scissors from behind the counter.

In that way, Sakura increased her sheets of origami paper from a mere fifty to three hundred and fifty colorful squares of paper. She did not, however, manage to fold any more origami cranes before bedtime.

 

 

After that, Sakura's hands were always busy folding paper during every spare moment of the day. She folded it when she got to school early, between classes, and at lunch, which Sakura was currently eating alone again. Sakura even folded cranes in the restaurant during lulls in business.

Even though she only needed to fold about three cranes a day to successfully complete her goal, Sakura found the repetitive motions soothing. They freed her mind from her emotions, almost like the meditation drills were supposed to do. Under the feeling that she was at last doing something to make her secret wish come true, Sakura's temper settled and her mood improved. Soon, there were delicate paper cranes in the pockets of all of her dresses, filling up her school book satchel, and in a large takeout crate under the counter in the restaurant. To keep track of them, Sakura bought a spool of fine white thread which she used to make colorful strings of cranes. Each string would be forty cranes long.

While folding her fifty-first crane, Sakura decided that her wish had something to do with Itachi. She missed him and she worried about him and she wished that he would come to see her soon.

Sakura was in the dentist's office (and working on her ninety-first crane) when she found the perfect magazine for making more origami squares. It was smaller than the other magazine but it was thicker and filled with bright, colorful pictures of places. When Sakura left the office, she took the magazine with her.

Sakura was folding her one hundred and sixth crane when she realized that she was tired of waiting for Itachi to hurry up and finish doing all of his stupid thinking. Sakura wished that she could go and see him.

As summer drew nearer, Sakura's mother began to experiment with ways to grill eel. They ate a lot of grilled eel for dinner before Sakura's mother felt confident enough to offer slices of watermelon and grilled eels as new menu items.

"They're experimental," Sakura's mother said as she wrote up the day's specials on the large chalkboard sign that they would prop up outside of the tea stand. "But if they work out, we'll offer them every summer after this."

"They're going to be super popular," Sakura assured her mother. She already had a stick of freshly grilled eel clutched in one hand and a slice of watermelon in the other. "They're delicious!"

"As long as you don't eat all of the eels and watermelon slices before the customers get here," her mother said wryly and Sakura blushed.

 

 

School was dismissed for the summer holidays before any of the clans' kids returned to the academy's classrooms. That did not, however, mean that Sakura saw much more of Ino, Shikamaru, or Choji. They were too busy helping their parents to play with her. Sakura, who was learning how to grill eel on the little portable grill that her mother kept on the front counter, completely understood. Sakura passed the first weeks of her summer with books from the academy's library, paper cranes, and grilled eel.

Sakura learned about the different kinds of chakra and how to fold a paper crane in three minutes or less and that, as much as she liked eating grilled eel, she did not like being in charge of grilling the eel.

Even through the tea stand's roof was high and sturdy and heavy white flaps of fabric hung around the three open sides of the tea stand, working in her mother's restaurant was hard, hot work in the summer no matter how many slices of watermelon or skewers of eel Sakura snitched. There was no air conditioning for one thing. For another, the little grill that Sakura used to make the eel skewers put out enormous amounts of heat. Despite being shaded by the roof and the flaps of fabric, Sakura felt like she was standing in the middle of the downtown market square when she stood near the grill. The only thing worse than standing near the grill was visiting her mother in the kitchen.

Even though she had opened both of the small windows in the stall's solid back wall, Sakura's mother was so hot that she had tied her hair up, knotted a bandanna around her head, and belted her light summer kimono up over her knees. She still had to wear her heavy cooking jacket and apron over her clothes, though. And, wherever her mother was working in the small kitchen, there was always a large glass of ice water or chilled tea nearby.

Since her mother never complained about how awful the kitchen was, Sakura tried not to complain about how awful the grill was, even after her mother hit on the idea of offering an order of skewered eel, a large slice of watermelon, and a large glass of chilled green or jasmine tea as a lunchtime special. It was their most popular dish that summer.

"I'm sorry that this has been a working summer for you, Sakura," her mother said once during the lull in business between the breakfast and lunch crowds. Afternoons, when smatterings of people wandered in and out between lunch and dinner, were much less predictable in terms of their peaks and lulls.

"It's okay," Sakura said, her fingers busy folding another origami crane. "I've done a lot of cranes this summer. I'm that much closer to discovering my wish!"

"That's the attitude," her mother said. She was smiling at Sakura. "Since the grilled eels and watermelon are moving so well, I was thinking about adding some seasonal soups to the menu."

"That might be fun," Sakura said cautiously. She was thinking about all of the variations on the eel recipe that she had had to eat before her mother had added the grilled eel to the menu. "Which season would you start with?"

"Spring, I think," said her mother with a little laugh. "It's my favorite season. And it matches your hair."

"Are you going to make pink soup?" Sakura asked, becoming excited despite herself.

"I might not go _that_ far," her mother said. Then, seeing Sakura's expression, she added, "But it might be worth a try."

Toward the end of the summer, Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji began coming around the stall with their kinsmen. Sometimes they invited her to play or go swimming or come on a picnic in the Nara forest. When that happened Sakura gleefully abandoned her grill and her paper cranes to go play with her friends.

The only thing that marred Sakura's otherwise happy summer was Itachi's continuing absence.

"Are you still worrying about that Uchiha?" Ino asked once. She was smearing sunblock on Sakura's back. Nearby, the boys were still splashing around in the lake. When Sakura nodded, Ino said, "Forget him. Uchiha are trouble."

"But Itachi is my friend!"

"He's not a very good one," Ino said critically. Her hands were hot and gentle against Sakura's sun-warmed skin. "He's always going off and making you worry about him. And he makes you sad."

Sakura shrugged. It was all true.

"He's still my friend," she declared. "And sometimes he's a very good one. Just not right now."

Ino snorted but all she said was, "You're done."

"Thanks," Sakura said as picked up the sunblock and turned toward Ino.

As Sakura rubbed sunblock into Ino's back, Ino shouted at the boys, "You're going to get sunburned again!"

For answer, Choji and Shikamaru splashed them.

"That's it!" Ino declared. "This means war!"

Sakura was so busy playing splash wars with Shikamaru and Choji and then with forcibly smearing sunblock on the losers that she forgot about Itachi. For awhile, at any rate.

 

 

By the time that school started up again in the fall, Sakura had folded four hundred and ten cranes. Even better, Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji were all present on the first day of school. Ino, who sat near Sakura but not next to her, watched Sakura fold cranes with open fascination. At lunchtime, Ino asked about Sakura's new hobby.

"That's silly," Ino scoffed after Sakura explained the legend to her. Swallowing a mouthful of rice, she said, "If you want your wish to come true, you're going to have to take action and _make_ it come true with your own two hands. Sitting around and wishing for things to happen never actually makes them happen."

"What if you don't yet know what the wish is in your heart of hearts?" Sakura asked as she neatly folded a wing out of glossy magazine paper. She paused to take a bite out of her tuna fish sandwich.

"How could you _not_ know what you want?" Ino demanded.

"Not everyone knows exactly what they want the precise moment that they first want it," Shikamaru drawled as he selected a riceball from his bento box. "Sometimes things get troublesome and complicated and people have to sit quietly and think about things for awhile before they know what they want and what they should do to get it."

"Laziness!" Ino accused.

"It's not laziness," Choji loyally defended. "Shikamaru's exercising his brain."

"He thinks too much," Ino replied. Stabbing her chopsticks at first Shikamaru then Sakura, she said, "They both do. It's the danger of having such big brains."

"Thanks?" Sakura asked, ignoring Shikamaru's snort. Her fingers were busy putting crisp folds into the thick magazine paper. "I, uh, think."

Ino grinned. "Can we help you make your cranes?"

"Only if I die," Sakura replied. She held up her finished crane for a moment, admired her masterpiece, then dumped it into the school satchel by her feet.

"How many have you made?" Choji asked as he popped a sliver of steak into his mouth.

"Four hundred and fourteen," Sakura said proudly as she fished another square of magazine paper out of her school satchel. "This'll be my four hundred and fifteenth."

"That's a _lot,"_ Choji said admiringly.

"But nowhere near one thousand," Ino replied with a frown. "How can you have made so many and still not know what your wish is?"

"I don't know," Sakura said with a shrug. "Things are complicated."

Shikamaru nodded wisely. "If you want, we could play shogi on it."

"Maybe," Sakura hedged. She liked playing with Shikamaru but she never, ever won when they played shogi or go. "If I get through the full thousand and I still don't know what I want, I'll try that next."

 

 

Sakura had completed four hundred and sixty-three cranes when Ino asked if Sakura knew what the wish in her heart was yet.

"No," Sakura admitted between throws. They had stayed after school to practice on the student kunai range together. Since the air was getting cooler and the leaves were beginning to turn colors, they were both wearing thick sweaters and trousers. Frowning at the target across from her, Sakura said, "At the very beginning, I thought that I wanted Itachi to forgive me but I don't now. And I'm getting tired of always waiting for him to come and see me."

"So why don't you go and see him?" Ino asked.

"Because I don't know where to find him or where he lives or anything," Sakura admitted with an awful sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. It hurt to say, "I don't know Itachi very well."

It was also the truth.

"It's okay," Ino said, patting Sakura's shoulder sympathetically even though she had never entirely approved of Itachi. "You're better off without him. He never came around very often and you only saw him when he felt like seeing you. He wasn't a very good friend."

Remembering all of the ribbons and weapons and the enormous tomes on plants that Itachi had bought her over the years, Sakura found it impossible to agree with Ino. Itachi had cared enough to pay attention to her and think of her when they were apart. But her hurt feelings made it impossible to disagree with Ino too. If Itachi was her friend, why was he ignoring her?

_Maybe,_ Sakura thought unhappily as she plodded home after practice. _Itachi used to be my friend but he's not anymore because he's mad at me even though I didn't do anything wrong._

She dashed the tears out of her eyes with the back of her wrist.

_That's so unfair! The next time that I see Itachi, I'm going to tell him so! **If** I ever see him again,_ Sakura wiped more tears out of her eyes then bit her lip, hard. _I'm **definitely** going to see Itachi again! If only so that I can yell at him!_

Furious, Sakura stormed the rest of the way home.

 

 

When she finished folding her four hundred and ninety first crane, Sakura admitted to herself that, even though she was still Itachi's friend and she still worried about him, she was also angry at him for staying away for so long.

Sakura had never been angry at Itachi before.

It was surprisingly easy.

 

 

Sakura was folding her five hundred and second crane when Itachi's friend came to see her. At least, Sakura assumed that was why he was standing across from the register, staring at her intently and creeping her out.

"Would you like to order something?" Sakura asked as she put her half-finished creation away. She flashed the potential customer her best smile. She hoped that he ordered tea so that she could crumble some of her dried azalea leaves into his brew. While she was uncertain how potent dried azalea leaves were, Itachi's kinsman was certainly scary enough to deserve a few azalea leaves in his tea.

The teenager shook his head. He continued to stare at Sakura.

Sakura stared back at him. She tried not to fidget or panic. Sakura could do nothing about the way that her skin pricked with goosebumps, however.

"Excuse me," said a balding ninja to Itachi's creepy cousin. The newcomer was slim and neat and a very good customer. "Are you standing in line?"

Rather than answering or ordering, the Uchiha moved to sit at the counter without ever taking his dark eyes off of Sakura. His stare made Sakura clumsy and forgetful. Fortunately, the customer, after sliding a long, considering look towards the Uchiha, chose not to complain about having to repeat his order three times or the ungainly presentation of the onigiri in his takeout box. As a silent thanks, Sakura included two extra riceballs, both filled with spicy pollack roe, which she knew it to be one of his favorites.

Trying to ignore the staring stranger, Sakura set about tidying her part of the restaurant. She refilled the condiment containers, spilling nearly as much as she got in the bottles, and folded a few paper napkins into ungainly shapes. After the couple sitting at one of the small tables under the overhang left, Sakura grabbed a tray and went to clear away their dirty dishes. By then, she was beginning to get used to the other's stare.

When the strange Uchiha finally said, "Why haven't you apologized to Itachi?" Sakura _felt_ her temper snapped.

"Why should I?" Sakura demanded as she brushed past Itachi's friend and then around the end of the counter. Her hands were gripping the tray of dirty dishes so tightly that her fingers ached. "I didn't do anything wrong!"

"No, you didn't," he quietly agreed. "I understand that now. And so does Itachi, I think."

"Then he has no right to be mad at me," Sakura snapped as she strode down the length of the counter to the doorway to the kitchen. "He's being unreasonable. _He_ should be the one pursuing his friendship with _me!_ And no customers behind the counter!"

Itachi's friend, who had been in the process of slipping through the raised bit of counter, stopped where he was as if he had intended to stand in that precise location all along.

"Sometimes, people lie with words or a smile to smooth the way."

"I don't!" Sakura lied.

Raising his voice so that Sakura could hear him even in the kitchen, the Uchiha said, "Itachi isn't well. And he's under a lot of pressure. With his parents, the elders, and most of the adults in ANBU's holding cells, he's leading the clan. He needs the support of his important people which seems to include you."

"He has other friends," Sakura shouted back. Unlike Itachi's cousin, who managed to sound just like he always did even when his voice was raised, her voice sounded shriller and thinner when she raised hers. "He has you!"

When she slapped the tray down onto the bit of counter nearest to the sink, the dishes on the tray rattled with the force of her ire. Pretending not to see her mother's reproachful look, Sakura stormed back out into the main part of the restaurant and down the length of the counter.

Itachi's friend was where she had left him, standing on the threshold of the raised bit of counter top. He took a hasty step back when Sakura slammed the counter top down between them with a crack of wood against wood.

When she moved to whirl away from the strange teenager, a tug on her wrist stopped her. Sakura looked down to see a large hand curled around her forearm. The tips of his fingers were cold against the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist. She had not even seen his hand move.

"I'm not his friend," the teenager said quietly. His tone was bitter and unpleasant to hear. "I'm not capable of being anyone's _friend._ Neither is Itachi. And yet, you are his."

"Then he should _be_ a friend," Sakura snapped, trying to ignore the fear twisting in her stomach. When she looked up, the teenager's black eyes were awful as his tone had been. "I'm always the one who has to try hard and smooth things out between us! Why can't he ever come to me and just tell me what's wrong or shout at me or be the one to make things okay between us?"

"Perhaps he doesn't know how," the Uchiha opined. He was leaning across the counter, his face so close to Sakura's that every time he spoke a word she could see the shadows clinging to the back of his mouth. "I don't believe that Itachi has ever had a friend before."

"Everyone has friends," Sakura scoffed.

"Not _everyone,"_ the Uchiha disagreed, which made Sakura sad for him. That was probably why she lost her mind and said one of the stupidest things in the history of the world.

"Would you like to be friends?" As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Sakura wanted to swallow them back up. She immediately began to pray that he laughed at her or turned her down or stalked off. Instead, he stared at her very hard for several agonizing seconds.

"No," he said slowly. "But I will help you pursue your friendship with Itachi."

"Thanks," Sakura breathed on a ragged sigh of utmost relief. She was deeply grateful that he had let her off the hook.

Nodding sharply, the Uchiha let go of her, turned on his heel, and left. He was odd and scary and terribly confusing and Sakura was relieved to see him leave.

_I hope that Itachi's cousin forgets all about me and the tea stand,_ Sakura thought as she watched him get further and further away. It seemed unlikely but she was discovering that that was what the thousands cranes were about: hope.

 

 

Sakura was making her five hundred and sixty-eighth crane when Ino flopped down in the seat next to her. Looking up from her self-appointed task, Sakura hissed, "Ino! Iruka-sensei'll be here any minute!"

Iruka-sensei was a new teacher at the academy and one of Itachi's old teammates. He was also one of her mother's best customers. None of that mattered during school hours, though. Worse, their familiarity outside of the academy seemed to make Iruka-sensei go even harder on Sakura when she misbehaved. Sakura in no way wanted to be caught with so much as a toe out of line.

"No, he won't. He's got the flu. We've got a substitute today."

"How do you know?"

"I've got my sources," Ino replied with a bright smile. "But I wanted to talk to you about a project that I'm working on."

"Oh? What sort of project?"

Leaning closer and tilting her head at an angle, Ino murmured to Sakura under the ambient noise of their classmates' conversations. "I'm supposed to help my cousin Fu get re-socialized. I was thinking that if you adopted one of the new students too, we could work on it together."

"There's going to be new students?" Sakura asked excitedly. She was willing to accept Ino's word for it. Ino really did have her sources.

"Lots of them," Ino confirmed. "When they come, tell me if you like any of them and we'll adopt that one for sure."

"Okay," Sakura agreed. She was not entirely certain what they were talking about but she trusted Ino.

The next day, an alarming number of empty chairs appeared in their classroom.

Three days later, after Sakura had folded her five hundred and eightieth crane, a long, perfectly straight line of children and teenagers was marched into their classroom. Among them was Ino's cousin Fu, who was three years older than them and already a chunin. His blond hair was like a beacon against his companions' more subdued coloring.

Iruka-sensei, who still looked somewhat ill, explained that the new students were there for socialization. Some of them would become their new classmates but most of the newcomers would be moving up to the older year groups after they had successfully completed their assignment. In the upper classes, they would either receive more practice socializing or join their academic peers or both.

The new students introduced themselves one by one and then were encouraged to find seats among the class.

A girl with dark hair and a hard face claimed the seat to Sakura's left. A boy with dark blue hair, sharp teeth, and empty eyes claimed the seat to Sakura's right. Sakura twisted around in her seat just in time to watch Ino yank her cousin down into a seat next to herself. Smiling, Sakura turned around again.

When class started, Sakura lost interest in the newcomers.

 

 

"I don't like them," Choji said at lunch. Glaring across the courtyard, he chomped on a chip. "They're creepy."

Sakura glanced in the direction that Choji was looking. The newcomers had congregated together into an enormous, silent group. They were mechanically eating their bento boxes and staring at each other with blank expressions. Fu, who had somehow escaped Ino, was among them. Shivering, Sakura said, "They look like a flock of crows."

"Exactly!" Choji exclaimed with a satisfied nod.

"Don't agree with him!" Ino scolded. "You're supposed to be looking for one to adopt!"

Shikamaru groaned. "You didn't agree to do that with her, did you, Sakura?"

"Well..." Sakura hedged and Shikamaru groaned again.

"You're going to regret that," he predicted darkly only to be whacked on the shoulder by Ino.

"Lazy!"

"Troublesome."

Sakura hid her grin behind an onigiri.

 

 

The next day the teachers announced that it was finally too cold to eat outside anymore. Everyone groaned at the announcement.

The cafeteria had high ceilings, large windows, and frayed blue padding on the walls that was supposed to dampen sound. The padding did not work very well since the cafeteria was the sort of place that retained sounds (and smells) and magnified them. Eating in the cafeteria was always noisy (and smelly, even to Sakura's rather ordinary nose).

On the other hand, her paper cranes would be safe from the wind.

Sakura would rather compete with the wind.

 

 

Sakura was folding her six hundred and twenty-seventh crane when a dark-haired boy claimed the seat next to her. Since Sakura did not particularly like the hard-faced girl, she was not sad to see her customary seat filled by someone else. The boy, whose name was Sai, had dark hair, a pale face, and large, liquid black eyes. He always seemed to have a sketchbook tucked under one arm and a couple of pencils poking out of his kunai pouch.

"I have observed you folding paper on several occasions," he said as he carefully placed his sketchbook on their shared desktop. "What are you doing?"

"I'm folding paper cranes," Sakura replied as she finished her latest creation. She held it up for him. "See?"

Sai studied the paper bird intently for several moments and then asked, "Can you fold other things?"

"Yes, of course. Would you like me to fold something for you?"

Sai studied her for several seconds before asking, "What would you make?"

"What's your favorite animal?"

Sai seemed to think about that for a very long time. While he considered the answer to her question, Sakura folded two more paper cranes.

"I don't know."

Sakura bit her lip then asked, "If you could only choose between a crane, a lion, a mouse, and a fish, which animal would you prefer?"

"The lion," the boy immediately answered so Sakura got out one of her precious squares of real origami paper and folded him a lion. When she finished and handed it to him, the boy held the paper lion up and examined it critically. Sakura waited breathlessly for several moments before he asked, "Will you use this technique in a jutsu?"

Stunned, Sakura stared at the boy for a second before she said, "I don't know anything about jutsu."

"You don't?" asked the boy as he carefully placed the lion on the top edge of his desk. "Do they not teach it in this academy?"

"Yes, of course," Sakura replied. "But to the upper forms. We mostly meditate and try to make leaves do tricks and things like that. No one's ever even made the leaf move, not even Ino."

"Ino?" he asked and Sakura pointed Ino out for him.

"She's my best friend," Sakura added proudly.

"Ah," the boy said blankly. Turning to look at Sakura, he asked, "What's a best friend?"

When Iruka-sensei arrived, his eyes almost immediately glanced over Sakura and Sai. But, rather than saying anything about the fact that Sai was sitting in the hard-faced girl's seat, Iruka-sensei merely started class. Occasionally during the lecture, his gaze would return to them, linger for a bit, and then move on again.

Sakura wondered if the new students needed to be socialized  _that_ badly.

 

 

Sakura folded her six hundred and twenty-ninth crane while her class waited for Kikyo-sensei to come and teach them a language arts lesson. She also used that time to rather awkwardly invite Sai to sit with her group at lunch.

Sakura did not know him well or at all really but Sai was the only new student who had ever voluntarily said two words to her. And, from what she had seen, he did not seem to have any friends of his own. In the very worst case scenario, Sai would probably be better company than Fu who always sat in grim silence and stared straight ahead while he ate. If Ino let go of his sleeve for even a moment, he was always off like a shot to sit with the other new students.

Sai immediately accepted.

When Sakura showed up to lunch with Sai in tow, Ino beamed at her and then at him. Choji dredged up an uncomfortable smile for Sai and Shikamaru made a despairing face. Weirdly, Fu stared at Sai for several seconds and then relaxed. Until that very moment, Sakura had not realized how tense Fu always was around them.

"Sooo, how did this happen?" Ino asked leadingly as Sakura sat down across from Ino. Sai claimed the seat next to Sakura. It placed him directly across from Fu.

"I am interested in Sakura's art," Sai bluntly informed Ino. Fishing the tiny paper lion out of his pocket, he said, "To demonstrate it, she made this for me."

"It's so cute!" Ino cooed.

"It's a lion," Sai informed her as he carefully placed the lion on the table midway between himself and Fu. Sakura assumed that he was trying to protect it from their various foods. It was weird and sort of flattering, especially since she could always make him another one if he wanted. It was just an origami lion, after all.

But Sai took it everywhere with him.

It sat on his desk during classes and rested safely in his pocket during kunai practice. It resided within his sketch book during taijutsu practice and sat on the table before him at lunch and in the library.

Sakura knew these things because Sai seemed to be wherever Sakura was. He always sat next to her in class (and the hard-faced girl always got his old seat) and joined her group on the kunai range. He was her taijutsu partner more often than not (which mean that Sakura ended up eating dirt more often than not but at least Sai was willing to show Sakura where she went wrong). When Sakura stayed late at school to work on her kunai or taijutsu or an extra credit assignment, Sai also happened to need to stay late. The only difference was that while Sakura researched school assignments, he usually researched friends and 'social interactions'. But they shared a library table just like they shared a lunch table and a desk, except Sakura sat across from Sai instead of next to him.

It was weird but sort of flattering; and an awful lot of responsibility. Sakura wondered if Ino ever felt that way about her. Then, because she could not decide if she wanted Ino to think about her the way that she thought about Sai, Sakura decided not to think about it at all.

"I think he's trying to make friends with you," Ino said one rainy Monday afternoon. They were in the Yamanaka Flower Shop. Ino was tending to the flowers while her father was busy in one of the shop's back rooms. He was making something for a client. Sakura, who was sitting at the counter and folding origami cranes, looked up from her task and smiled at Ino.

"I think so too," Sakura replied. "It's sweet but kind of scary because he doesn't know anything."

"It's a lot of responsibility," Ino agreed with a nod that made her barrettes sparkle in the overhead light. Frowning down at the tulips that she was working with, Ino said, "But at least he's trying. I don't think that Fu's trying at all!"

"At least he doesn't run away anymore," Sakura said, trying to be comforting even though she suspected that Ino was right about Fu. "I bet you like being able to use both of your hands during lunch again."

"He's only staying because Sai's there!" Ino fumed. "It's nothing I've done!"

"He's still doing better than he was," Sakura replied. "Which, hey, I've been meaning to ask you. Does Fu's tongue looks funny when he talks? Sort of like there are shadows sticking to the back of it?"

Sakura could not help but remember that both Itachi and his creepy cousin's mouth had often looked the same way. Sai's tongue usually looked like that too. In the present, Ino pursed her lips together for a moment before she said, "Yes."

"Are Sai and Fu like Itachi?"

"Sort of," Ino said reluctantly. "But less so because they didn't attend that ANBU school as long as Itachi did."

"Oh." Sakura stopped folding the little square of magazine paper because her stomach was making sickening swoops in her belly. Itachi had always seemed normal, if a little shy and a lot weird about touching. The idea that he was secretly as strange and confused as Sai and Fu made Sakura feel anxious for him again.

"Don't worry about him," Ino ordered. She always seemed to magically know what Sakura was thinking. "No one could be as infuriating and lost as Fu is. He's probably doing fine."

Sakura nodded, doing her best to believe her best friend. Ino stared at her for a moment, her expression thoughtful and her pale eyes piercing. The corners of Ino's mouth were very tight.

"Oh!" said Ino brightly. She plastered on a bright smile. "Did I tell you that I've been saving Daddy's old gardening catalogs for you? They're under the counter right there in front of you. I'll help you cut them into origami squares as soon as I'm done here."

Pushing aside her worries for Itachi, Sakura beamed at Ino. "Thanks! You're the best!"

"I try," Ino said modestly. Her smile, however, was entirely self-satisfied.

Sakura laughed.

 

 

The night that Sakura folded her seven hundredth crane, she decided to get rid of her dried azalea leaves.

_Things seemed to have settled down. And if anyone was going to come back and hurt us, they probably would've done it already,_ Sakura decided as she dumped the dried leaves and the tissue that they had been folded in into the toilet. _I never even looked up if I could actually poison someone with dried azalea leaves,_ she thought as she depressed the toilet's handle.  _But if I keep kept them for much longer, I might give into temptation and poison Itachi's creepy cousin the next time that he comes to the tea stand._

Watching the withered leaves swirl around in the current and then disappear down the hole at the back was actually rather soothing. It felt like flushing away her lingering worries. Everything was going to be fine. Probably.

 

 

Sakura was folding her seven hundred and thirteenth crane when she realized that Itachi had been away longer than he ever had before, including the six months that he had been at ANBU school.

It made her sad.

And stoked her anger at him.

Sakura was beginning to forget what it felt like not to be mad at Itachi.

 

 

Sakura looked up from folding her seven hundred and twenty-seventh crane to find Itachi's cousin staring at her again. After knowing Sai for a few months, Sakura was not nearly as disconcerted by the teenager's stare as she had been the last time that he had come to visit her in the restaurant. She was, however, so surprised to see him that she startled and yelped. Her mother had run to the bank and Sakura had thought that she was alone in the tea stand.

"You aren't doing _anything,"_ he accused, each word delivered on a puff of white mist.

"I'm making cranes," Sakura replied blankly while holding up her current half-finished project for his inspection.

Making a frustrated noise, the teenager disappeared into the shadows. Until that moment, Sakura had not realized how thick and substantial and vaguely menacing the shadows in the corners of the shop were.

_I hope that mama gets back soon,_ Sakura thought as she studied the shadows for any more hidden ninja. She was so busy looking for shinobi that she did work on her crane again until her mother got back to the restaurant. Even though Sakura was more of a ninja than her mother was, her mother's presence made the shadows look thin and not at all threatening again.

Sakura finished her seven hundred and thirty-fourth crane before they left the shop that night.

 

 

The day that Sakura folded her seven hundredth and sixtieth crane, she _finally_ managed to channel her chakra.

It happened during meditation time while Iruka-sensei was droning on and on about pulling chakra from their coils and working their chakra coils like muscles. He always gave a lecture on chakra just before they meditated. Since he usually said more or less the same thing but with different examples and metaphors, Sakura usually only listened to him with half of her attention. But the thing about chakra being like a muscle that you had to train up and learn to use properly caught her attention.

Sakura was not particularly good at taijutsu but she was flawless at performing her assigned kata.

_If chakra coils are like muscles,_ Sakura thought. _Then this should be like learning a taijutsu kata._

Sakura concentrated all of her attention on flexing her chakra muscle.

The moment after that, Sakura was filled with leaping energy. Her hair crackled with static electricity and the leaf in her palm crumbled to ash.

_Wait until Ino sees this!_ Sakura exalted, her heart thrilling in her chest. In that same moment, the sizzling energy slipped away from her.

Sai, who was sitting next to Sakura, smiled at her. It was stiff and sort of awful but Sakura beamed back at him anyway. When she did, Sai's smile widened.

"Very good, Sakura," Iruka-sensei said as he gave her another leaf. "But next time wait until the proper time to channel your chakra. And try not to burn your leaf."

"Yes, sensei," Sakura said dutifully as she accepted the new leaf. She was already working on flexing her chakra muscle again.

Sakura burned her next nine leaves to ashes. Iruka-sensei was not amused. (Sai and Ino, however, kept smiling at her.)

 

 

Sakura's crane production slowed down quite a bit after she learned to channel her chakra. Most of her spare moments were spent trying to make scraps of paper float over her palm without burning them to ash or even singing them the tiniest little bit. She still made cranes between classes and at lunch, though, because there were rules about not using chakra outside of the proper classes. Sakura did not want to break a rule and get yelled at or, worse, _punished_ by Iruka-sensei.

Sakura was sitting at the lunch table and folding her seven hundred and eightieth crane when Sai smiled his stiff smile at her and said, "You're exactly the sort of ugly bitch that I like best."

Sakura burst into tears.

Ino broke Sai's nose.

 

 

Sakura had mostly stopped crying by the time that Iruka-sensei finished sorting everything out. By then, Shikamaru and Choji had escorted Sai to the nurse's office and Ino had been banished to Kikyo-sensei's care to think about what she had done until Iruka-sensei had time to punish her properly. And at some point during the chaos, Fu had slunk off to the corner of the cafeteria that the other grim-faced new kids had claimed as their own. For herself, Sakura had been hustled out of the cafeteria and into the hallway by Iruka-sensei.

At that time of day, the hallway was deserted since everyone was either in class or in the cafeteria.

"Sai didn't _mean_ to hurt your feelings, Sakura," Iruka-sensei said tiredly. "He's trying very hard to be your friend."

"B-But h-he _said,"_ Sakura sniffled between little hiccuping sobs. She scrubbed an arm across her eyes. Even _thinking_ about what Sai had said was enough to make Sakura start crying again. She had thought that they were friends!

"Before he came to this school, Sai didn't have any friends," Iruka-sensei said as he crossed his arms over his chest. "He didn't even get to talk to people. Sai spent most of his time studying, training, or locked in a dark room by himself."

"That's awful!" Sakura gasped, her sniffles and sobs falling away. She forgot about her hurt feelings.

"Yes, it is," Iruka-sensei agreed. "Sai doesn't know the right things to say or do around people. He doesn't know how to make friends or keep them or what to do in public. And, you may not have noticed, but he doesn't talk very much."

Sakura wanted to argue with Iruka-sensei because surely she would have noticed that her friend was too quiet but, when she thought back, Sakura had trouble remembering times when Sai actually said things to her outside of calling her an - an ugly bitch and the things that he had said to her on the day that they met. And he had said that he _liked_ her just before the ugly bitch thing which, now that Sakura thought of it, was the first time that Sai had ever definitively said that he liked anything or anyone.

"I don't know Sai very well," Sakura concluded unhappily.

"No, you don't," Iruka-sensei agreed, which made Sakura's heart sink. "But you can get to know Sai by encouraging him to talk about himself and listening to what he has to say. Sai may not say very much but everyone wants someone to really know him and be his friend."

"Yes," Sakura said, her voice very small. She knew what it was like to be lonely and have no friends. How could she have forgotten what it was like to be shy? And why didn't she see that _Sai_ was lonely and had no one?

"I don't think that Sai should be punished for making a mistake, do you?"

Looking down at her feet, Sakura shook her head.

"Would you like to go see him?" Iruka-sensei asked, his voice becoming kind, and Sakura nodded.

"Is Ino going to be in trouble for hitting Sai?" Sakura asked as they walked to the medic nin's office. When Iruka-sensei pursed his lips and started to look thunderous again, Sakura hurriedly added, "She only hit Sai because he made me cry. I bet she didn't know that it was a mistake, either."

"We'll see," Iruka-sensei temporized. Realizing that was probably the best that she was going to get from him, Sakura let it go at that.

Outside of the medic nin's office, Iruka-sensei stopped Sakura with a light touch to the side of her shoulder.

"Remember," he said, "that Sai doesn't know anything about dealing with other people. If you're going to make up with him and be friends again, you're going to have to do most of the work, Sakura."

When Sakura nodded seriously, Iruka-sensei smiled at her, patted her on the shoulder, and opened the door to the medic nin's office for her.

The medic nin's office, like most of the rooms in the academy, was large and spacious with high ceilings and large windows. There was a long counter and lots of cupboards along the entire length of the wall to Sakura's left and narrow beds with wooden frames and thin mattresses to her right. Next to each bed was a little bedside table with a cupboard underneath it.

Sai was curled up in the bed furthest from the door and closest to the windows. His knees were bent up to his chest and his head was bent downward.

Suddenly nervous, Sakura stood where she was. She felt frozen. Then Iruka-sensei gave her a little push forward. Sakura automatically took a step and, since she was already moving, she kept taking steps forward. Walking across the first aid office to Sai was rather like being a ball rolling down a hill. Even though her stomach was twisting unpleasantly in her belly, each step was faster and easier than the last.

"Sai!" Sakura exclaimed as the front of her thighs hit the side of the bed. "How's your nose?"

Sai, who had his sketchbook propped against top of his thighs and his pencil out, looked up from what he was drawing. His face looked much better without the blood and bruising from before.

"The school's medic nin repaired it," he replied warily.

"I'm glad!" Sakura replied with a wide smile. "I'm sorry that Ino broke your nose. And that I cried. But you hurt my feelings when you called me - when you called me names. Can we still be friends anyway?"

"Do you wish to be?" asked Sai. He looked faintly surprised.

"Of course! Everyone makes mistakes!"

Sai studied Sakura for a moment more and then nodded. "Okay."

Sakura beamed at him again and then asked, "What're you drawing?"

"It's a picture book for my big brother."

"Oooohh, you have a big brother?" Sakura asked as she happily committed that detail to memory. Giving Sai's arm a little shove, Sakura said, "Move over and let me see!"

Sai stiffened under her hand but, after a moment, obligingly moved over on the bed. Sakura scrambled up beside him, the entire side of her body pressed against his. Sai was painfully stiff and still beside her.

_Maybe he doesn't know much about touching, either,_ Sakura thought with a pang of remembrance. Itachi had been uncomfortable with touching too. She shifted her weight so that she was sitting very close to Sai without touching him. Next to her, Sai began to relax.

"You can read it from either side," he reported as he slowly passed his sketchbook to her.

"Okay."

From one side, Sakura flipped pages and watched as a little Sai battled enemy nin and monsters. When she flipped from the other side, a pale-haired boy with peach-colored skin did the same.

"What will they do when they reach the middle?" Sakura asked.

"Be together," Sai said simply as he took the book back from her. "Sakura, my research has taught me that friends mock each other. Did I not do it correctly?"

Sakura thought about how to answer his question for a moment before she said, "It's tricky. Ino and Shikamaru do that all the time but it's funny. They never makes anyone cry. If you want to learn how to tease your friends, you should study them."

Sai nodded seriously. "I'm sorry I made you cry?"

"It's okay," Sakura said. She patted his arm. "And you did that exactly right."

Sai beamed his stiff, horrible smile at her. Sakura smiled her brightest, happiest smile back at him.

 

 

Later that night, when she was making riceballs, Sakura thought about Sai, Itachi, Fu, and Itachi's cousin.

Ino said that Sai and Fu were like Itachi and his cousin, except less so because they had not been in that awful ANBU school for as long as Itachi and his cousin had been. So, if Sai did not know about friends or friendship or people or what to do in public, maybe Itachi, his cousin, and Ino's cousin Fu did not know about them either. Maybe they were like Sai and did not even know what they liked most of the time. And, if they had spent most of their time studying, training, and not talking to people because they were locked in dark rooms by themselves, maybe they were quiet because they were uncomfortable and shy and lonely and did not know what to do about it.

Sai was her friend and, until that day, she had thought that she knew him well when she did not really know him at all. Itachi had been her friend (and maybe still was her friend) and, until that day on the practice ranges with Ino, Sakura had thought that she knew Itachi really well when she had really not known him at all.

Sai had been trying very hard to be Sakura's friend, even though Sakura had not realized how hard he was trying. He had not meant to hurt her feelings when he called her that name. Itachi had probably been trying very hard to be Sakura's friend too, even though it was hard for him and Sakura had not realized how hard he was trying. Maybe he had not meant to hurt her feelings by ignoring her and staying away for so long. Maybe Itachi was like Sai and simply did not know how to make up after a fight. Maybe Itachi still wants to be friends.

_I should ask Itachi and his cousin more questions,_ Sakura decided. _The next time I see that Uchiha cousin, I'm definitely going to ask him for his name._

 

 

The next day at school, Sakura turned to the blue-haired boy sitting on her other side and, even though she knew his name from the introductions on his first day of class, she introduced herself.

The blue-haired boy stared at Sakura for a few moments then grunted, "Samemaru."

"It's nice to meet you," Sakura said with a smile. The boy was staring at her again so Sakura said, "It's what people say when they've just met someone for the first time. Sometimes they mean it and sometimes they don't. But I really do mean it this time. I'm glad to meet you, Samemaru."

His eyes narrowed at her for a moment before Samemaru said experimentally, "It's nice to meet you."

Sakura beamed at him. Samemaru did not smile back. All things considered, that was probably not a bad thing.

 

 

"What is your name?" Sakura asked the next time that Itachi's creepy cousin came to glare at her. She was standing behind the tea stand's counter, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her warmest coat. The ganging flaps of heavy white fabric protected against sun glare and the wind but they did nothing against the cold. Sakura bitterly missed her little eel grill, which had been neatly put away in a cupboard beneath the counter.

He left without answering.

The next time that Itachi's cousin came to glare at her, Sakura asked him the same question. He once again left. Sakura asked him three more times before he finally said, "Uchiha Shisui."

"It's nice to meet you," Sakura said as she spooned up a bit of the spring soup from her left-hand bowl. "Would you like a taste?"

After the success of the eel skewers and watermelon slices over the summer, Sakura's mother had decided to add seasonal soups to the tea stand's regular menu. That, in turn, meant that they had made and tasted a lot of tiny variations on the same theme. In front of her, Sakura had three bowls of spring soup finalists. She was tasting them against each other, with sips of hot spiced orange tea in between, ostensibly for comparison and contrast purposes but mostly so that she could cup her hands around the soups' warm bowls.

The Uchiha - Shisui - crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Sakura. That was a tiny bit terrifying.

"What are you doing for Itachi?"

"Nothing," Sakura admitted. Even if her wish involved Itachi, and it seemed very likely that it did, she was technically making the cranes for herself, after all. "I haven't finished my cranes yet."

"Don't waste your time," snapped Shisui. "The cranes are worthless."

"That's not true! How else will I know what I want?" Shisui stared at Sakura as if he suspected her of secretly being a moron. When he continued to stare at her like that, Sakura said hesitantly, "It's a civilian thing?"

Looking utterly disgusted, Itachi's cousin Shisui disappeared into the shadows. Sakura hated it when he did that.

 

 

"Your cranes would make excellent messengers," Sai said one day while Sakura was making her final, frantic push to finish her set of one thousand cranes. "They're small and light, which would probably make them fast too."

Sakura was so surprised by the comment that she actually stopped folding long enough to look up at Sai and say, "What?"

After Sai patiently repeated himself, Sakura said, "They're really fragile. And burnable. And they'd dissolve in enough water."

"There are ways to fix things like that with chakra," Sai assured her as he drew a little stick man in his notebook. A moment later, the stick man peeled itself off of the paper and stood between them on the desk.

"Amazing!" Sakura delightedly clapped her hands together. "Sai must be a ninja genius!"

"It's merely practice," Sai placidly assured her. "Squish him between your hands."

"What?" Sakura asked. She looked down at the little figure made from thick black lines. "Wouldn't that be sort of cruel?"

"He isn't real," Sai said, impatience lining his voice. "Just do it, Sakura."

Remembering her decision to be a better friend to Sai, Sakura lowered her hands to either side of the little man. She squeezed her eyes shut and clapped her hands together.

There was a moment before her palms came together when Sakura felt the shape of the little man against her palms. The curve of his head dug into one of her knuckles and the rest of his body felt like smooth little pipe cleaners. The the moment passed and her hands were pressed palm to palm, leaving Sakura with the feeling that she had just crushed something delicate to smithereens.

"But it was just ink," Sakura exclaimed as she opened her eyes. Her hands were an inky mess. "It felt real enough when I squished it but I _saw_ you draw it."

"Chakra," Sai succinctly explained. "You could use your chakra to make your cranes less likely to burn or crumple or dissolve. The only really tricky bit would be figuring out how to make them fly."

"I can make paper float over my palm," Sakura said eagerly. She picked up one of the finished cranes on her desk, leaving inky fingerprints on it. "Here, watch."

Sakura proudly made her crane float over her palm, using only chakra. She expected Sai to be impressed or at least to agree that she could certainly make her birds fly but Sai shook his head and said, "That's not the same thing. You're holding the crane up with the controled force of your chakra. To make that crane fly anywhere, even across the room, you'd need a wind jutsu."

"Oh," said Sakura dully. The little crane bobbled then came to rest on her blackened palm. "I don't know any wind jutsu."

"Neither do I," Sai admitted. "I'm sure that we can find one, though."

"In the library?" Sakura was starting to get good at finding the books that she needed in the school's library.

"People don't normally leaves books or scrolls of jutsu lying around in libraries because they're worried that they might be stolen, probably by enemy nin," Sai said as their next teacher came into the room. "If you're going to learn a wind jutsu, you'll have to either find someone to teach it to you or make one up yourself."

Just then, the lesson started and both Sai and Sakura turned their attention towards the board. By the end of class, Sakura's pencil and all of her notes were covered in smudges of black ink, not that Sakura minded. She did, however, use the time between her classes to go to the bathroom and wash her hands. When she got back to her seat, Sai was staring rather intently at another little stick man. This drawing, however, was _dancing._

"How's it doing that?" Sakura asked as she slid into her seat between Sai and Samemaru, who leaned around her. He was watching Sai's stick man with great interest.

"Chakra manipulation," Sai replied, looking up from his creation. When he looked at Sakura, the stick man stopped dancing.

"Is it a jutsu?" Sakura asked and Sai shook his head. Surprisingly, it was Samemaru who answered her.

"Jutsu affect the outside world. When Sai made the stick figure step off of the page, that was a jutsu. Making the stick figure dance is just manipulating the chakra that he had already put into the jutsu."

"Oh," Sakura said, looking between Samemaru, who looked nervous, and Sai, who was nodding. "I see. Thanks, Samemaru!"

Samemaru's smile was even worse than Sai's was. It was stiff, horrible, and filled with razor sharp teeth.

_How did Itachi's smile end up so nice?_ Sakura wondered as she said, "So to make a crane fly, I'd have to learn a wind jutsu _and_ learn how to manipulate the chakra in it?"

"Yes," Samemaru confirmed.

It seemed like a lot of work, even for her. Then Sakura thought of the way that Ino would look at her the first time that she passed a note to her using an origami crane and her very own wind jutsu and thought that it might not be so much work after all.

Sakura decided to visit the library after school.

 

 

Like the rest of the rooms in the Shinobi Academy, the library was large with enormous windows and high ceilings but it always felt rather small and cozy to Sakura. That was probably because it was literally filled to the ceiling with books. The study tables, which were situated so that they would receive the maximum amount of sunlight from the windows or else pushed together in front of the librarian's desk, were wooden and shiny. The chairs were wooden, shiny, and quite heavy.

Sakura, who liked to read and did every extra credit assignment offered by her teachers, spent a lot of time there. She even had a favorite table, which she now shared with Sai.

On that particular day, however, Sakura bypassed her favorite study table and went straight to the card index and looked up 'jutsu' under the topic cards. According to the card index, there was an entire section of the library devoted to jutsu creation. Unfortunately, it was in an area reserved for students who were within a couple of years of graduating or were real genin. Fortunately, the school librarian had never worried too much about enforcing those restrictions. Even more fortunately, she liked Sakura.

Sakura browsed the books for a few minutes then, deciding that all of the books looked equally likely, grabbed four books at random and took them to the check out desk.

"Not staying today?" the librarian asked as Sakura signed the cards for the books that she was taking out.

"I can't," Sakura said regretfully. "I'm needed at the restaurant tonight."

"Well, mind you bring these back on time," the librarian said as she stamped the due dates onto the inside cover. "Jutsu creation isn't a popular subject but you never know who might suddenly develop an interest in it."

"Yes, ma'am."

 

 

It only took folding two hundred and twenty cranes and reading four books on jutsu creation to drain away Sakura's anger and hurt and sadness. It hurt like squishing puss out of a blister but when she was done, Sakura finally felt good again. And, when she finished the last crane, Sakura finally had her thousand.

Warm and content inside of herself for the first time since she had overhead that conversation between Itachi and Shisui, Sakura surveyed her strings of flying cranes with pride. Her wish was finally a clear and definite thing, ready to be born into the world. Sakura finally knew what she wanted.

She was ready to speak with Itachi.

Sakura had used up all of her real origami paper months ago so, using a leftover square of cut magazine paper, Sakura started folding. Under her hands, her one thousand and first origami crane began to take shape.  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Title:** On Paper Wings  
>  **Fandom:** Naruto  
>  **Rating:** G  
>  **Content Notes:** None  
>  **Disclaimer:** I have no rights to or within the Naruto franchise, copyright, character or trademark. This is for fun, not profit.  
>  **Summary:** It takes Sakura one thousand cranes to discover the wish in her heart, struggling to be born. It takes Itachi a thousand cranes to find the courage to articulate the wish in his heart, even to himself.  
>  **Additional Notes:** This fic fills the "unrequited pining" square on my Hurt/Comfort Bingo card and the "unrequited love/pining" square on my trope bingo card.

Sakura's first attempt at a wind jutsu scorched her one thousand and first crane to ash and made her bedroom smell like a thunder storm. After she beat out the small fire on her desk, Sakura cleaned up the mess, and went to bed. In the morning, she went back to the academy's library for more jutsu creation books.

"Are there any books that are only about making up wind jutsu?" Sakura asked the librarian as she checked in Sakura's books. On the weekends, the library was open specifically for the benefit of the village's genin, who might not be able to get to the library during its regular weekday hours. Fortunately, the academy's librarians liked Sakura immensely. "These books didn't help me at all."

"I think there are a few," the ancient kunoichi replied. "Let's go look."

Sakura patiently dogged the librarian's footsteps as she searched for Sakura's requested books. The ones that she found were big and thick and filled with long words that Sakura did not know.

"None of these are on your reading level," the librarian said with a frown.

"But I can still try to read them, right?" asked Sakura, who had her eyes glued to the books in the librarian's hands. She was terribly worried that the librarian was going to put the books away without letting her read them.

The librarian pursed her lips and, rather than answering, added a dictionary to the pile of books then passed the lot of them to Sakura.

"Give it a go at one of the tables," she said. "If you still want to borrow them after an hour, I'll let you sign them out."

"Okay!" Sakura said, beaming. She took her books over to her favorite study table.

An hour and ten minutes later, Sakura had not made much progress in the first book. But, since it was almost time for the restaurant to open, Sakura checked them out anyway. She made sure to get the dictionary too.

On her way to the tea stand, Sakura stopped a military policeman who was wearing the same fan on his shoulder that Itachi had always worn on his jackets.

"Excuse me, sir," Sakura said politely. "Can you please walk me to the Uchiha clan's ghetto?"

The policeman, who was tall with short brown hair and scars all down one side of his face, peered at Sakura suspiciously for a moment before he said, "A nice little girl like you doesn't need to be visitin' a place like that. Get along home with your books, little miss."

Sakura sulked and stomped the rest of the way to her mother's tea stand.

 _I could probably find the Uchiha clan's ghetto all by myself,_ Sakura thought grumpily, _but I'm not allowed to wander around the village all by myself. Would it still count as wandering around the village by myself if Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji came with me? Probably._

At the restaurant, Sakura called a greeting to her mother, who was already working in the kitchen, then put her books under the counter and moved to stand next to the civilian girl who was standing behind the counter. Saturdays were one of their busiest days at the tea stand so her mother often brought in extra help on them. Even so, Sakura noticed Itachi's cousin, mostly because she looked up from making specialty onigiri for an order to find him sitting at the bit of counter in front of her and staring at her with a blank expression and dead shark eyes. Startled, Sakura yelped, dropped her onigiri, and caught it again.

"I _hate_ it when you do that," Sakura gasped. Even though she was used to being stared at by Sai, Samemaru, Fu, and the other new kids in her class, who would probably always be 'the new kids' even after newer kids joined her class, Shisui's stare had always been the worst. Maybe it was because she knew that Itachi feared Shisui's spinning sharingan eyes. Maybe it was because Sai and the others did not know any better but Shisui _did._ He sneaked up on Sakura and stared at her just to torment her like a snake might do to a mouse.

In the present, Shisui's wide nostrils flared. Sakura, who would have sworn that he was somehow staring at her even harder, stumbled back a step. Her hands tightening, one into a fist and the other around the hapless onigiri, Sakura hissed, "Stop that!"

Shisui did not.

Sakura, who found herself sincerely regretting flushing those dried azalea leaves down the toilet, tried to turn her attention back to her onigiri. The one in her hand was beyond repair so she popped it into her mouth and started another one. The next three onigiri were the three most perfect onigiri that Sakura had ever formed in her entire life. Having completed the requisite number of onigiri for the special, Sakura arranged them on a plate and put the plate on a tray. Then she fetched from the kitchen's pass through a steaming bowl of miso soup, a china teapot of hot spiced orange tea, and a small plate with several sticks of fried tofu on it. Sakura added those to the tray as well as a teacup, folded paper napkins, and the necessary eating implements.

While the civilian girl took the tray the customer who had ordered it, Sakura kept an eye on the cash register and started putting together the next order which was much larger as it was for a pair of Akimichi ninja. In fact, Sakura got so busy that she forgot to be uncomfortable under Shisui's awful stare. When Sakura finally looked up from her work again, Shisui was gone. Sakura was not sorry to see him go, even if had had never gotten around to ordering.

On Sunday, Sakura was excused from working at the tea stand. She spent her morning at the furthest table from the stea stand's counter, working on her homework and slogging through the jutsu creation books. After quite a bit of reading, Sakura was fairly certain of two things. Firstly, jutsu that started with a rooster hand seal were always wind jutsu but not all wind jutsu started with a rooster hand seal. And secondly, the easiest way to start a wind jutsu was to breathe or blow it out of your mouth.

 _I can do this,_ Sakura though as she flipped to the illustrated table of hand seals at the back of one of the library books. _It'll be like creating a new soup._  
  
Using the table of seals, Sakura began systematically trying combinations of hand seals to see if any of them made a wind jutsu. All of her combinations started with a rooster hand seal. Sakura noted her hand seal combinations and their results on a spare bit of paper just like her mother did with potential new recipes.

Two small fires, a light breeze which may or may not have been due to sitting so close to the edge of the tea stand, and a spark of lightening later, Sakura decided that it was time to take a break and do her homework. It would definitely be much safer.

At lunch on Monday, Ino said, "You haven't folded a single crane today."

"I finished my thousandth crane over the weekend," Sakura proudly replied as she folded a turtle.

"Congratulations!" Choji enthused. "Did you discover your wish?"

"Yes!" Sakura said cheerfully. "Now I've got to hang my cranes outside and let my wish out into the world before I tell anyone. But I haven't done that yet."

"You should take your time and enjoy them," Shikamaru grumbled. "They were an awful lot of work."

"You should hurry up and hang them outside!" Ino disagreed. "Then you can tell us what your wish is and we can help you make it come true!"

Smiling at Ino, Sakura said, "I think only Itachi can make it come true."

At her words, Fu looked up sharply from his contemplation of his rice. Sai, who had been following the conversation intently, asked, "Who's Itachi?"

"Sasuke's big brother," Ino said dismissively.

"He's Sakura's friend," Choji added, giving a strange weight to the short sentence but Sakura nodded and agreed anyway.

"Does he attend this academy?" Sai asked.

"No, he attended our academy," Fu replied, his voice harsh. It was the first time that he had spoken to any of them of his own volition since his arrival at the Shinobi Academy. "He's our senpai."

Sai, his expression suddenly blank, nodded seriously at Fu.

Sakura opened her mouth to ask how they had ended up attending the same awful ANBU academy as Itachi only to have her words become a sharp yelp. Someone had kicked her under the table! When Sai and Fu turned their attention to her, Sakura weakly asked, "You were both at a different academy before? Was it in the village?"

While the boys seemingly considered her question, Sakura glared at Ino, who shrugged and smiled her sweetest smile. It did not fool Sakura for a minute.

"Yes," Fu said at last, apparently in answer to both of Sakura's questions.

"You wouldn't have liked it," Sai hastened to assure her. "No one did any art."

Despite herself, Sakura had to smile. "Except you."

"Except me," Sai agreed and smiled one of his better smiles at Sakura. It was still pretty awful.

Fu went back to staring intently at the half-eaten contents of his bento box. He did not say anything else throughout the rest of lunch. But, when Sakura passed Fu the paper turtle, he quietly pocked it.

After school, when everyone was scattering and going home for the day, Shikamaru caught up to Sakura in the schoolyard. He invited Sakura over to his house for tea and shogi.

"I probably can't," Sakura said with genuine regret. Going to Shikamaru's house was always fun. "Tonight's my mom's one night off from the tea stand. She'll probably want us to spend it together."

"Ask your mother tonight what afternoon you can come by," Shikamaru said. "Any day's good for my family."

"Okay!"

Her mother suggested going to Shikamaru's house the next Monday, since Mondays were the one day of the week that the restaurant was actually closed. Her mother liked the older civilian girls who worked at the restaurant on the busiest nights or when Sakura was elsewhere but she preferred it when Sakura worked behind the counter because, unlike the civilian girls, Sakura worked for free.

When Sakura dutifully relayed her mother's suggestion to Shikamaru on Tuesday, he immediately said, "That'll be fine. Come over next Monday."

"Don't you have to ask your mother?" Sakura asked.

"She said that any night that was good for you was good for us too."

"Oh." Sakura smiled at Shikamaru. "I'm glad!"

Shikamaru's answering smile was crooked and weak. "Yeah."

On her way home from school, Sakura asked three different police people if they knew where the Uchiha ghetto was. While their responses ranged from, "No one needs to visit that place," to "Wait and work on your school project tomorrow at school," one thing was very clear: it was going to be much trickier to get to the Uchiha clan's part of the village than she had expected.

Adults just did not seem to want to go there.

Huffing with irritation, because she had said nothing about a school project and she obviously needed to go to the clan's ghetto if she was asking to go there, Sakura stomped the rest of the way to the tea stand.

Wednesday afternoon, Sakura left school with Ino. All the way to the Yamanaka Flower Shop, Sakura complained to Ino about her problem, saying, "No one wants to take me to visit Itachi. No one even wants me to go anywhere near the Uchiha compound!"

Frowning, Ino said, "That's really strange. I'll ask my dad if he'll take us."

Ino's dad was willing but, unfortunately, he lacked the time to take them all the way to the Uchiha clan's ghetto.

"Don't worry," he said to Sakura. "I'm sure something will turn up."

Sakura doubted it but she certainly hoped so.

Since Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were all super busy days at the tea stand, Sakura did not even try to skive off or get an adult that Sakura's mother would trust like a policeman to show her the way to the Uchiha clan's ghetto on Thursday or Friday. Instead, she went directly from the academy to the tea stand without stopping to bother any of Konohagakure's military police. Thursday and Friday were completely boring and did nothing to advance Sakura's goals, namely to talk to Itachi.

On Saturday, during the lull between the breakfast and lunch crowds, Sakura stumbled onto a chain of hand seals that resulted in her blowing slicing wind blades at a stack of paper napkins. It was her first real wind jutsu!

When Sakura's mother saw the shredded mess that Sakura had made of the stack of paper napkins that Sakura was supposed to be folding into cute shapes, she was less than impressed with Sakura's discovery. Sakura received a long lecture about how dangerous it was to do jutsu outside of the academy and being wasteful as she cleaned up her mess.

Sakura was still super proud of her invention.

On Sunday morning, Sakura asked her mother if they could go visit Itachi in the Uchiha ghetto sometime.

"Oh, I don't think so," her mother said as she locked their apartment's door behind them. "Not unless he invites us. It would be rude to impose ourselves on him."

"Oh," said Sakura. She hugged her library books to her chest. "But he used to visit us at the tea stand all the time."

"That was different."

"Because he bought things?" Sakura asked. She already knew that it was pretty rude to go around bothering people when they were trying to work.

"Because he was a customer," Sakura's mother corrected as she turned towards Sakura. Smiling, she said, "Let's have a good day today."

"Yeah," said Sakura, who was going to spend the day doing her homework and reading ahead on next week's assignments. One thing that was becoming abundantly clear was that it was going to be much harder than she had expected to go and see Itachi.

When Monday and the much anticipated visit to Shikamaru's house arrived, Sakura was still trying to master the art of making up her very own wind jutsu. It was not going well. As they walked to his home together, Sakura told Shikamaru all about the trials and tribulations in trying to figure out how to make an origami crane float. Shikamaru spent most of the walk laughing.

"There aren't a lot of wind users in the village," he said, surprising Sakura. "So it's good that you're trying something new."

"There aren't?" Sakura asked. "How do you know?"

"I don't know?" Shikamaru said. He shrugged. "It's just something that I've heard somewhere?"

Sakura nodded, accepting that answer. Ino learned a lot of interesting things that way.

"I did have one set of handseals that worked out," Sakura said. A warm glow of pride filled her. "It didn't do what I wanted it to do but it was still really cool!"

"Yeah?" asked Shikamaru. He looked intrigued. "What's it do?"

"I made wind blades!"

"Show me!"

"Here?" Sakura asked. They were on a really busy street. But, even though there were rules against using chakra or doing jutsu outside of the prescribed classes, Sakura really wanted to show off her new jutsu.

"In the forest," Shikamaru said. "You can't get in trouble for what doesn't get back to Iruka-sensei."

Sakura grinned.

Shikamaru's house was in a large clearing at the center of the Nara Forest. All of the Nara clan lived in houses in the same clearing. Sakura liked the Nara Forest, even though it was not like the regular forest that was part of Konohagakure no Sato. The trees in the Nara Forest were smaller, more gnarled, and grew more closely together. The shadows that gather behind them and among their twisting roots somehow seemed more solid than the shadows anywhere else in the village. And Sakura had heard once that the Nara forest was even older than the forest that surrounded the village.

But, despite all of that, the Nara clan's forest was not scary. Once, when Sakura had told Ino that, Ino had said that Sakura only liked the forest because she stuck to the paths. Since Sakura had not wanted to have nightmares or be afraid to go visit Shikamaru, Sakura had decided not to ask Ino what happened to people who stepped off of the path.

When they were safely inside of the forest's perimeter and well out of view of casual observers, Shikamaru pointed to an enormous drift of dried leaves. Sakura carefully tapped into her leaping, fizzling chakra, slowly made the chain of seals that she had discovered, and blew a lungful of air at the leaves. Invisible wind blades shredded the leaves into tiny, drifting bits of brown, dark yellow, and red.

"That was even better than it was with the napkins!" Sakura exalted.

"Very cool," agreed Shikamaru. He grinned. "I wonder what else you could cut up with it."

Sakura grinned back at him. "We could try some stuff?"

"We could try _lots_ of stuff," Shikamaru corrected. "Let's do that tree over there."

When they finally got to Shikamaru's house, Shikamaru grumbled to his mother that he and Sakura were home. They were changing their sandals for slippers when Shikamaru's mother called, "You're late! I've already laid out tea and biscuits on the table closest to the shogi board."

"Thanks, Mom!"

They played two games of shogi, both of which Sakura played vigorously but still managed to lose, and ate too many of Shikamaru's mom's tasty biscuits. Her tea was not as good as Sakura's mother's tea but Sakura suspected that was because she might not know how to match the size of the bubbles in the boiling water to the type of tea leaves that should be added. Water that was too hot would ruin the more delicate teas while water that was not quite hot enough did not bring out the full bouquet of flavors in the stronger teas.

Despite what many people thought, Sakura knew that making good tea was an art like flower arranging or painting or folding paper. Still, it was not Shikamaru's mother's fault that her talents lay in baking, not making tea.

They were on their third game of shogi when Shikamaru said, "Your Uchiha friend is not okay."

"What?" Sakura fumbled and dropped the foot soldier that she had been moving. "What's wrong with Itachi?"

"I don't know. I overhead my dad talking to my mom the week before last. And they said that he's not doing well."

 _"Why not?"_ Sakura demanded, her tongue feeling thick and heavy in her mouth.

 _"I don't know,"_ Shikamaru said again. He shot Sakura an aggrieved look. Shikamaru hated to repeat himself. "All I heard was that he was doing an okay job of running his clan while his parents were in prison but that the strain was obviously getting to him. They said that they could practically see him unraveling, which is apparently very bad for the village. As they're usually careful not to let me overhear anything interesting, I thought that maybe it was supposed to be a message to someone that I knew. And the only person that I know who'd care about Uchiha Itachi is you."

"I see," Sakura said slowly. After a moment of frantic thought, she asked, "Shikamaru, are you allowed to go to the Uchiha clan's ghetto?"

"No."

Sakura wilted. She dragged her sleeve across her watering eyes.

"But we can ask my mom to take us."

Straightening, Sakura beamed at Shikamaru. "You're the best!"

"Remember to tell Ino that some time," Shikamaru said dryly. But his answering smile was very pleased.

Shikamaru's mother was too busy with dinner and fiddling with some photographs from a mission to walk them over to Itachi's house.

"But," she added. "If you get your chores done early, I'm sure that your father will take you, Shikamaru."

Sakura immediately offered to help Shikamaru with his chores. She spent the rest of the afternoon helping Shikamaru to fetch things, carry other things, and feed animals. The best part was when she got to pet a deer.

When Shikamaru's father came home, the sun had set and the shadows were already long and blue with twilight. Shikamaru asked his father if he would walk them to the Uchiha Clan's ghetto before his father had even gotten his sandals off.

"The chores?" Shikamaru's dad asked.

"Sakura and I've already done them," Shikamaru replied.

"Okay." Raising his voice, he called to Shikamaru's mother, "We'll be back soon."

"Soon!" his mother called from the kitchen. "If dinner burns, you're still going to have to eat it!"

"You heard her," Shikamaru's dad said to Sakura and Shikamaru as they hurriedly put their shoes on. "We've got to hustle. I don't want to eat charcoal."

"Mom's not a very good cook," Shikamaru confided to Sakura in a whisper.

"I heard that!" shouted his mother.

Laughing, Shikamaru grabbed Sakura's hand and pulled her out of the house. Outside, Sakura and Shikamaru had to jog to keep up with Shikamaru's dad.

Shikamaru's dad was not like Ino's dad. He was quiet and distant and he rarely laughed in front of Sakura. But it was really obvious that Shikamaru looked up to his dad. Since Shikamaru was smart and kind and at least as big a crybaby as Sakura herself, Sakura liked Shikamaru's dad on general principle.

But she was going to have to start liking Shikamaru's dad for himself after this.

"Are we going to see anyone specific?" Shikamaru's dad asked presently, his dark eyes slanted towards Shikamaru. Sakura wondered how he managed to avoid things like people, telephone poles, and small dogs without even looking where he was going.

 _"Daaad,"_ Shikamaru puffed. He glared at his father. "I already told Sakura that you and mom want her to go make up with Uchiha Itachi for the good of the village."

"And you're willing to be one of his important people for the village's sake?" Shikamaru's dad asked, his gaze sliding from Shikamaru to Sakura.

"I was already trying to make up with him," Sakura admitted. Scowling, she said, "I thought he'd come around to the tea stand but he didn't. And then I was mad at him for awhile. And now I know that there are a surprising number of people who will _not_ take me to the Uchiha ghetto and I'm not allowed to walk around the village by myself. My mom said so."

"Your mother's right," Shikamaru's dad said. He smiled at Sakura. "You and Shikamaru are still quite young."

Normally, when Shikamaru's dad smiled, it scared Sakura. People in Konohagakure no Sato had lots of scars and Sakura rarely paid any attention to them. But, when Shikamaru's dad smiled, the giant slashing scars on one side of his face and down his neck somehow made it look super scary. Fortunately, Sakura had been practicing smiling back at people who smiled terrible smiles.

"It's troublesome," Sakura complained, borrowing Shikamaru's favorite complaint. Shikamaru's dad's smile widened. "It makes it hard to do the things that I want to do. _And_ I'm almost nine."

"That's still not very old," Shikamaru's dad said.

"Nine is pretty old," Sakura insisted. "Itachi could go around the village by himself when he was nine. He was a real ninja."

"Yes, I suppose he was," Shikamaru's dad agreed.

"Hey," Shikamaru said abruptly. "How did you know that Sakura's one of Uchiha Itachi's important people?"

"It came up during his interrogation," Shikamaru's dad said vaguely. "How long have you known Itachi?"

"Since forever! He's come to the tea stand for as long as I can remember." Smiling, Sakura added, "When I was little, he used to bring me things from his missions like ribbons and oranges and a set of jacks."

"Why?" asked Shikamaru.

"I don't know," Sakura replied with a shrug. "He just did. It seemed to make him happy."

"Why'd he stop then?" Shikamaru asked.

 _After he went to special ANBU school, everything changed,_ Sakura thought sadly. Aloud, she said, "I don't know. Maybe he stopped seeing things on his mission that he wanted to share with me."

"Hn," grunted Shikamaru's dad. "Even a terrifying ninja will show a gentle face to the ones that he loves."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes. His tone accusatory, he said, "You say that about mom all the time."

 _"Is_ Itachi terrifying?" Sakura asked at nearly the same time. She was honestly surprised.

"Well, it's true about your mother," Shikamaru's dad said to Shikamaru with a sly grin. To Sakura, he said, "Itachi is a brilliant and strong shinobi. And he's determined enough to do anything that he sets his mind to. That combination of traits often frightens lesser shinobi."

"Oh," said Sakura, who was uncertain how she felt about Itachi scaring people.

"Don't worry about it," advised Shikamaru's father. He roughly ruffled Sakura's hair. "He doesn't scare you and that's what's really important."

Feeling better, Sakura nodded. She was fairly certain that Shikamaru's father meant it, even if he meant something other than what she heard. Adults were like that _a lot._

Sakura knew that they had arrived at the Uchiha's ghetto when she saw the tall wall with red and white Uchiha fans painted on it every meter or so. Inside of the wall, it was like stepping into another, smaller village. Where Konohagakure was in a perpetual state of comfortable disarray, all of the buildings in the Uchiha village were lined up with military precision. All of the buildings were painted in shades of white or pale blue and there were giant Uchiha fans everywhere that Sakura looked. Everything was cleaner too with no graffiti on any of the walls and no trash in the gutters or even in the trash cans that lined the sidewalks.

"Woah," Sakura breathed as she tried to look at everything at once. "Why do they even come outside to see the rest of us?"

"That," Shikamaru's father said rather grimly, "is probably part of the problem."

"They don't like us," Shikamaru said unhappily as he edged closer to his father.

It was true. Everywhere Sakura looked, dark-haired, dark-eyed people looked back at her with open suspicion. Feeling intimidated, Sakura edged closer to Shikamaru.

Rather than trying to persuade them otherwise, Shikamaru's father said nothing at all. Somehow, his silent agreement made all of those hostile stares _worse._ By the time they got to Itachi's house, which turned out to be at the very back of the clan's ghetto, Sakura felt exhausted. Being silently hated took a lot out of a person.

Itachi's house was huge. It had a large front garden with lots of grass and no flowers and it sounded like there was running water or a pool somewhere behind the house. Painted on the front door was another of those giant Uchiha fans. By then, Sakura was sick of seeing that stupid fan everywhere that she looked.

Sakura understood being proud of your family. She was terribly proud of her mother and her mother's tea stand. But there was a difference between pride and being unbearable and the Uchiha district was definitely the latter. Sakura rang Itachi's doorbell anyway.

Sasuke answered the door.

"Hello," said Sakura's classmate. He looked uncertain and the door was opened just wide enough for his body and no more.

Trying to smile at him, Sakura asked, "Is Itachi home?"

Sasuke stared at her for a long moment. Then his eyes wandered to Shikamaru and finally to Shikamaru's dad. Finally, Sasuke turned sideways in the doorway and shouted into the house.

"Aniki! There's a man here to see you!"

A few seconds later, Shisui was standing behind Sasuke. His eyes flickered over Shikamaru and his father, lingered on Sakura, and returned to Shikamaru's father.

"He's just stepped out," Shisui said. "Can I help you?"

"No, thanks," Shikamaru's father replied.

"Do you want to leave a message?" Shisui pressed and Sakura automatically shook her head. Leaving Itachi flower messages at the hospital had not worked out at all. At moment later, Shikamaru's dad repeated her denial and Shisui said, "Well, I'm sorry that we couldn't help."

He looked genuinely regretful. Sakura felt pretty regretful too. She had made Shikamaru and his dad walk all the way to Itachi's house to find out that he was not even home!

Walking through the Uchiha ghetto was just as nerve-wracking the second time around. When they had cleared the Uchiha wall, Shikamaru's father said, "He was there."

"He was?" Sakura asked. "Did you see him?"

"No, but he was there."

Sakura felt the corners of her mouth turn down unhappily. If Itachi was there but pretending not to be, then he was deliberately avoiding them.

 _But is he avoiding me or Shikamaru's dad?_ Sakura wondered. She really hoped that Itachi was just avoiding Shikamaru's dad. He was pretty scary, after all. The other option, that Itachi was avoiding _her,_ was something that Sakura tried very hard not to think about.

"Why did you bring the Nara clan head to Itachi's house?" Shisui asked the next day, startling Sakura so badly that she dropped a handful of disposable chopsticks.

"Why do you always do that?" Sakura demanded as she squatted down and gathered up the fallen utensils. Rather than putting them in the chopstick dispensers, Sakura threw them all away. "I waste a lot of stuff every time you come around."

"You should not blame me for your failings as a shinobi," he replied. "Answer my question."

"Are you going to order something?" Sakura asked. She was doing her best impression of Ino, who would never have let Shisui scare her or try to boss her around.

"No."

"Then please come again when you have money," Sakura replied, remembering what her mother had said about the difference between uninvited guests and paying customers. "Customers are always welcome."

Then, doing her best to ignore Shisui and his dead eyes, Sakura went back to her prep work. The next time that she happened to glance in Shisui's general direction, Sakura was relieved to see that Shisui was gone.

Shisui came back to the stand on Thursday afternoon. He entered the stand like a normal person, making the appropriate amounts of noise as he swatted aside the heavy white flaps of fabric and strode across the tile. He stood in front of the bar, placed an order for a glass of hot green tea and fried tofu sticks, and then sat down on a stool and said, "Well?"

"Well, what?" Sakura asked as she carefully poured hot green tea into a glass.

"Why did you bring the Nara clan head when you came to visit Itachi?"

"I prefer not to discuss my private business with customers," Sakura said, repeating a phrase that Ino had given her when she had complained about Shisui at lunch. Apparently, Ino's dad used it when people came into the flower shop and asked him personal questions that he did not want to answer. In the present, Sakura set the wonderfully warm glass of tea in front of Shisui. "The tofu sticks will be ready momentarily."

Shisui disappeared before the tofu sticks were ready, leaving money and his untouched glass of green tea on the counter. Sakura carefully poured his glass of tea down the nearest drain and ate his fried tofu sticks. They were hot against her chilly fingertips and crispy and perfect.

Friday and Saturday passed in a whirl of school and work. On Sunday, when Sakura was doing her school work, Shisui came to the tea stand again. This time, his right arm in a crisp white sling. He ordered enough takeout for six people and then said to Sakura's mother, "I'm so sorry to ask, but may I borrow your daughter? I've injured my sealing hand and I'll need help carrying all of the boxes home."

Sakura's mother hesitated for a long second or two, evaluating Shisui, before she said, "You're one of Itachi's cousins, aren't you?"

"Yes."

Sakura's mother nodded, tapped her nail on the counter twice, and then turned to Sakura and said, "Please come straight home after you finish your task."

"Yes, Mama," said Sakura, who was excited to be going to Itachi's house even if she would be going with creepy Shisui.

Sakura, who soon found herself weighted down with takeout boxes, walked beside Shisui in awkward silence all the way to Itachi's house. It was a very long, very boring walk.

"Please come inside," Shisuji said when they reached Itachi's house. "And lay out the food."

Sighing, Sakura followed him into the house and toed out of her sandals in the entrance way. She waited patiently while Shisui slipped his house slippers on. Then she followed him down a long hallway with white walls and gleaming hardwood floors. He led her through a doorway and into a large, sunny kitchen.

While Sakura arranged the food as artfully as she could manage on the kitchen table, Shisui looked for Itachi and Sasuke. He found Sasuke easily enough but Itachi seemed to have mysteriously vanished. Sakura was saddened by that. When she was done with her work, Sakura said by rote, "Thank you for your order. Please come again."

Sakura was not surprised that Shisui saw her to the door. Sitting down on the floor to put on her sandals in front of Shisui was uncomfortable, though. Sakura got through it by telling herself that, as soon as she was done, she could escape Shisui. If she was super lucky, it might be weeks or months before she was forced to see him again.

It was something of an unwelcome surprise to see Shisui slip his sandals on too. Shisui silently followed Sakura out of the house and all the way back to the tea stand. It was a long, uncomfortable trek. When she was safely standing in the warm glow coming from her mother's tea stand, Sakura turned to Shisui and said, "Thank you. And please come again."

It was a relief to see Shisui slip into the shadows and disappear.

Apparently taking Sakura at her word, Shisui returned to order more takeout the next day, the day after that, and the day after that. And every time, Sakura had to carry all of his boxes and bags home for him and arrange them on the family's kitchen table. And, no matter how many times she trudged across the village to Itachi's house, Sakura never managed to run across Itachi.

Even though he was not supposed to know that she was coming, Itachi always seemed to know it anyway. Sakura was not surprised. Itachi had always been magic.

All the way back to the tea stand, Sakura tried to imagine how Itachi had figured it out. Eventually she decided that he had probably just known what his cousin was likely to do.

When she got back to the tea stand, her mother casually asked if she had seen Itachi.

"No," Sakura said as she put on her apron again. "He was out."

"Did you go looking for him?" her mother asked sharply, looking up from her hands. She was making onigiri, her movements practiced and smooth even when she looked away.

"No," Sakura insisted. "Shisui lives with him. Or he spends a lot of time at Itachi's house. He was there when Shikamaru's dad went to see Itachi." Off of her mother's sharp, irritable look, Sakura hastily added, "We went when I went over to Shikamaru's for the afternoon. He took Shikamaru and me with him so that Shikamaru's mom could make dinner in peace. She's not a very good cook."

Sakura's mother relaxed again. Looking down at her onigiri again, she said, "Good. Don't make a pest of yourself, Sakura."

"Yes, Mama."

The floating paper mouse happened on a Wednesday afternoon. For one glorious moment, Sakura's creation took flight in a quick, sharp line of motion.

 _It's flying! It's flying!_ Sakura thought and shrieked, immediately losing control of the jutsu. The paper mouse drifted down to the scrubbed counter top. _I made it fly!_  
  
"What?" demanded her mother as she rushed out of the kitchen with a cleaver in one hand. "What happened?"

"My mouse floated!"

Sakura's mother stilled. Her withering look punched a hole in Sakura's good humor.

"Sakura! I thought that something awful had happened! I thought that we were being robbed or that you had burned yourself!"

"Sorry, Mama?" asked Sakura, who was uncertain if she was actually repentant. She was sorry to have worried her mother but she was just so _excited!_ Her flying jutsu worked!

Unfortunately, half-heartedly apologizing to her mama was not nearly enough to get Sakura out of having to endure a long lecture about the boy who cried wolf. Sakura tried to patiently endure it. Not very successfully it turned out, since her mother told her off for not paying proper attention when someone was speaking to her.

It took _forever!_

When her mother (and her cleaver) _finally_ marched back to the safety of the kitchen, her back and shoulders stiff with leftover outrage at the false alarm, Sakura returned her attention to her part of the tea stand, more specifically to her paper mouse.

Since the restaurant was still empty, Sakura decided to see how long she could hold her flying mouse aloft. Her paper mouse was wobbling and floating midair when the next set of customers came in. Sakura let the last of her breath out in a quick puff that made the mouse rise sharply before the jutsu ended with her breath. Deprived of her breath and molded chakra, the paper mouse immediately began to drift down toward the counter top. Smiling brightly, Sakura picked up her pad and pen and asked, "How may I help you?"

Even though there were rules against using chakra or doing jutsu outside of the prescribed classes, Sakura _had_ to show off her new jutsu at school. That was why, when the teachers were switching classes, Sakura quickly folded a crane and said, "Look at this!"

Then she did the jutsu, sucked in a half breath, and breathed on the crane. It flew!

When she ran out of breath, the paper crane fluttered back to the desktop.

"You learned a wind jutsu," Sai noted. "Who taught it to you?"

"I figured it out myself!" Sakura said proudly.

"Impressive," Sai said in that cool, flat way of his. On her other side, Samemaru nodded. Sakura was still fairly certain that they meant it. "Would you like to learn how to maneuver the bird?"

"Yes, please."

Between classes, Samemaru and Sai explained the basic theory for how shinobi controlled and manipulated the chakra that they put into their techniques, sending a water dragon here or directing an ink creation there.

At lunch, Ino and Choji were gratifyingly effusive in their praise for Sakura's efforts. Shikamaru looked both vaguely impressed and like he might be thinking about taking another nap. Shikamaru did not find school very interesting.

By the end of the day, Sakura had a new goal. Her paper cranes were going to learn to fly in loops and circles and wherever she wanted them to fly.

 _As long as I have hot air to blow at them,_ Sakura thought as she walked to the academy's library. School was over and she wanted to exchange her jutsu creation books for books on controlling jutsu. _I should probably try to work on that too._

Now that she had the basic "ingredients" for her jutsu, it was time to start tweaking the proportions and spices. Sakura's wind jutsu recipes were going to be the best ones ever.

It was becoming obvious to Sakura that Itachi was avoiding her.

Thanks to Shisui, Sakura had been visiting Itachi's house two or three times a week. She had gotten to see a lot of Sasuke, who almost never said anything to Sakura, but had never seen so much as a hair of Itachi. That made Sakura sad but she was not nearly as discouraged as she had been last spring since she was sure that, like Sai, Itachi probably had no idea how to make up with someone after a fight.

Usually reserved for studying, tests, shogi, and Ino, Sakura focused all of her ferocious concentration on Itachi. She knew things that he liked best to eat - onigiri filled with seaweed, miso soup, dango, orange spiced tea in winter, and chilled green tea during the hottest part of summer. She knew that he enjoyed giving her presents, getting hugs, and brushing her hair. And she knew that puzzles and secret messages fascinated him.

 _Except, he rejected my flower messages in the hospital,_ Sakura thought unhappily. _But we've both had plenty of time to cool off and calm down. Maybe he'd accept them now? Or maybe it would be better to use something new to get his attention? But what else could I use? I don't know any other secret ninja languages._

And _that_ was the crux of Sakura's problem. She had already shared all of her secrets with Itachi.

Sakura was still worrying at her problem when Shisui next came to visit. His arm was, as usual these days, in a sling.

"Another crane?" he asked, his tone disgusted. "Why waste your time on such frivolous things?"

"It's not for my thousand," Sakura assured him as she finished folding her paper napkin and added it to the box of folded paper napkins underneath the counter. "I've already finished those."

"A _thousand?_ Why would anyone even _want_ a thousand paper cranes?"

"You don't know the legend about the thousand paper cranes?" Sakura asked, surprised. A moment later, she remembered that Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji had not known it either.

"No," Shisui said, his tone conveying his complete disinterest in the legend.

Shrugging, Sakura picked up the pen next to the till, took up her pad of paper, and asked, "May I take your order, please?"

The conversation with Shisui, although short and unimportant, was one that Sakura thought about often. She apparently had at least one more secret for Itachi to puzzle out. Knowing that was enough to make Sakura positively cheerful. But she had no idea how to use her secret to catch Itachi's attention.

 _I'll give him cranes like they're flowers,_ Sakura eventually decided. _Except, I'm the only person who knows what the cranes mean so he'll eventually have to come and ask me._

The next time that Shisui made Sakura walk him home and help him set out the takeout, Sakura carefully put a little origami crane on top of the order of seaweed-filled onigiri. Shisui looked at the crane but made no comment.

Weeks passed and Sakura took every opportunity to work on her crane campaign. She left paper cranes on the takeout boxes, in Itachi's sandals, carefully arranged on the family's kitchen counters, and in Itachi's coat pockets.

 _"More_ cranes?" Ino demanded when she caught Sakura folding more paper cranes at school. "Are you working on another wish?"

"No, these are for Itachi," Sakura assured Ino as she creased a wing into existence.

"Itachi?" Ino asked. She wrinkled her nose. "Why?"

"Because he isn't accepting flowers any more," Sakura replied. "And I wanted to tell him something."

"Can we help you make _those_ cranes?" Ino demanded, clearly exasperated.

"Of course!" Sakura replied as she passed Ino a square of homemade origami paper. "They aren't wishes. Do you know how to fold an origami crane?"

"You can teach me," Ino said determinedly.

In between her school work, folding more cranes, and work in the restaurant (and sometimes when she was doing those other things) Sakura worked on her wind jutsu. Sakura was happy with her progress with her jutsu.

She was less happy that, despite all of her carefully placed paper cranes, Itachi was still nowhere to be found. Clearly, Sakura needed to do something drastic.

Sakura started her campaign to do something drastic by asking Sai and Samemaru what they knew about the Uchiha clan.

"Nothing," Sai immediately replied and Samemaru shook his head.

At lunch, Sakura asked the others what they knew about the Uchiha clan.

"Not every Uchiha has the special eyes," Ino immediately replied. "Some develop the sharingan but most don't. But it's impossible to tell who has what at a glance."

"They steal other clans' techniques with their eyes," Choji added. "That's why our clans don't use chains of hand seals outside of practice."

"The sharingan can see in the dark," Shikamaru said slowly. "Not as well as Yamanaka eyes but better than most. Without the sharingan, the Uchiha can only see about as well as you or Choji."

"They like fire techniques," Fu said abruptly, the words practically bitten off. Beaming, Ino patted Fu on the arm.

"Thanks, everyone," Sakura said, despite the fact that she had been hoping to get something a little more helpful and a lot less eye-related from them.

Choji nodded, Shikamaru shrugged and looked away, and Ino and Sai smiled. Fu ignored her gratitude but when Sakura slid another folded turtle toward him, Fu quietly pocketed it.

Sakura was still trying to work out what drastic thing she was going to do about Itachi when she finally figured out what to say to Shisui. After toting Shisui's things around for almost a month, Sakura finally scraped up enough courage to overcome her prickling uncomfortableness and say, "I'm sorry that you hurt your arm. How is it?"

It seemed rude to ask what had happened to him or demand to know when it would be better but asking how his arm was might be somewhat more polite. Mostly, though, Sakura was tired of walking back and forth across the width of the village. Previously, Sakura would never have guessed that Itachi walked so far to eat at their restaurant. It made her feel special and like she should maybe offer him a free glass of water or tea if he ever came back to the stand again.

Shisui shot Sakura an incredulous look.

"It's fine," he said as he took his arm out of the sling. He flexed and twisted his appendage to show Sakura just how completely fine it was. "I wanted to give you another opportunity to speak with Itachi."

"Then why are you making me carry all of your boxes all of the way across the village?" Sakura practically shouted at him. Scary Uchiha cousin or no, she was not a pack mule!

"I'm the customer," he replied, his smile normal looking but utterly insincere. "The customer is always right. If I say you're a pack mule, then you're a pack mule."

Sakura roughly shoved the boxes and bags of food at Shisui, who managed to catch them all before they hit the ground, and stormed off.

"This isn't working," Sakura told Shisui one afternoon. Sakura had never quite gotten around to telling her mother that Shisui was a big faker.

"We just have to keep trying," Shisui said determinedly. He was carrying his own takeout dinner. It was a point of pride to Sakura that he did so.

"If Itachi doesn't want me to catch him, I'm not going to," Sakura replied tiredly, thinking of what Shikamaru's dad had said about Itachi. If he was so determined that he frightened people, there was no way that she or Shisui, who still kind of scared her, were going to out-stubborn him. "We have to do something different."

Sakura refused to think that her odd friendship with Itachi might be over. If Itachi wanted to stop being friends, he was going to have to _tell her_ that he was not going to be her friend anymore. Until then, she was going to proceed on the understanding that he was the same sort of idiot as Sai. And that he never meant to hurt her feelings, even though he had.

"What would you suggest?" Shisui demanded waspishly. His eyes narrowed. "Do you think that Itachi would want to rescue you from me?"

"No!" Sakura yelped. She immediately turned around to head back to the restaurant. "Thank you for ordering dinner from us! Please come again!"

The next day, Shisui showed up at the stand with his arm in a sling, made his order, and requested Sakura's help with his things. Rather than finally telling on him, Sakura went along with him. Apparently, Shisui could not think of anything else to do. Or maybe he was determined to prove that he was even more stubborn than Itachi (which was impossible, in Sakura's opinion). Either way, if they were going to try something new and drastic, it was up to Sakura to think of it.

"I know what I'm going to do about Itachi!" Sakura announced excitedly to Ino one morning. It was nearly the winter solstice and, as a tribute to one of the most romantic holidays of the year, they were making love cakes in their kunoichi's cooking class.

"Yeah?" Ino grunted. She was glaring down at the contents of her mixing bowl. When she had cracked her egg over the dry contents, Ino had gotten tons of tiny little shards of egg shell into her cake batter. "What?"

Sakura, whose cake was already in the oven, helpfully dumped out the contents of Ino's mixing bowl and started again. As she quickly measured and added ingredients, Sakura told Ino her idea.

"I don't know, Sakura," Ino said doubtfully as Sakura cracked one egg and then the other one over the dry ingredients in the bowl. This time, there were no shards of shell in the mix. "It seems unlikely to persuade most people."

"It'll work on Itachi," Sakura said confidently as she pushed the bowl towards Ino.

"And he's the only person that it really _has_ to work on, I guess," Ino said as she began to grimly mix the contents of her bowl. Cooking was not one of Ino's many strong points. "Ask your mother what day I can come over to your house and I'll ask my dad."

"Okay!" Sakura enthused. "Thanks, Ino!"

"No problem," Ino replied. She frowned down at her batter. "Why is this so lumpy? Yours wasn't lumpy."

Sakura did her best to save Ino's batter.

After that, Sakura and Ino visited each other's houses at least once a week. Between visits, Sakura worked on perfecting her control of her wind technique on her own. Shisui took the new pull on Sakura's time poorly.

"Don't you care about Itachi any more?" Shisui demanded.

Sakura, who was walking beside him, could not speak at that particular moment. She was using all of her breath to make a paper crane soar and swoop in front of them. When Sakura nodded that yes, she definitely still cared about Itachi, her crane bobbled up and down, lost its draft against the air, and disrupted the jutsu. Sakura was going to have to work on that. Ino said that she should be able to move without messing up her wind jutsu.

"Then why weren't you at the restaurant the last time that I came by to get you?" Shisui demanded.

"I was busy," Sakura said as she rushed ahead to scoop up her paper crane. "I'm working on my own thing."

"For Itachi?"

"Yeah."

Shisui subsided, apparently accepting that answer. But after that, Shisui cut his visits to the tea stand down to once a week. Frankly, Sakura was relieved. Even after walking back and forth across the village a few times a week for several months, Sakura still found Shisui and his shark eyes to be incredibly creepy.

After about two months of practice, Ino declared Sakura's jutsu to be up to her task.

"But it could be something really amazing if you kept at it," Ino added. "Especially if you somehow got around the lung capacity thing."

"I'm not going to give up on it," Sakura assured Ino. "But I need it to do this one thing sooner rather than later."

"And it does that one thing amazingly well," Ino said, her praise making Sakura flush with pleasure. "It's beautiful. But you have to talk to Itachi's cousin now. I don't want to get stabbed while we're visiting your friend."

"Okay," Sakura said. "But it's going to be awful."

"Of course it is," Ino agreed. She patted the back of Sakura's hand. Sakura turned her hand so that she and Ino were holding hands. "But you're doing it for Itachi."

While Sakura worked up her nerve to ask Shisui for a favor, Ino arranged to have a slumber party. When Ino invited everyone over to her house, Sakura and Choji immediately accepted. Sai said, "I cannot. I am required to sleep in my assigned quarters every night so that I may be monitored. It was one of the terms of my release."

He looked faintly distressed so Sakura patted the back of his hand the way that Ino sometimes did for Sakura. Sai turned his hand so that they were holding hands, exactly the same way that Sakura often did with Ino. Sakura gave his hand a little squeeze.

"I'll come," Shikamaru sighed. "But trying to sneak past your dad will be troublesome. We'd be better off sleeping over at Sakura's house."

"We're sneaking out?" Choji demanded. "Why are we sneaking out?"

"Why my house?" Sakura asked. "It's really small. My mama's room is right next to mine."

"My house is closer to the Uchiha ghetto," Ino added. "Sakura says that it's a really long way from the tea shop. It'd be even further from her house."

"Of course we're sneaking out," Shikamaru said to Choji. "Ino and Sakura have been working on a top secret project for months. And, whatever it is, they need our help to finish it. In the Uchiha ghetto, apparently."

Choji grimaced. "None of us are old enough to go to the Uchiha ghetto."

"We're going with Fu," Ino replied. "He's a real genin! It's practically like going with an adult."

"I'm coming with you?" Fu asked, looking faintly surprised.

"Of course you are!" Ino exclaimed. "Why wouldn't you come with us?"

To Sakura and Ino, Shikamaru said, "Ino's house may be closer to the Uchiha ghetto but we'll never make it past her dad. And he won't let us all sleep over if he's not home. Sakura's mother is a civilian so it'll be easier to sneak past her. Even if Sakura's house is much further away from the Uchiha ghetto and her room shares a wall with her mother's room, it'll be easier to leave and return to Sakura's apartment."

"What about it, Sakura?" Ino asked. "Will your mom let us sleep over?"

"I don't know," Sakura admitted. "I'll have to ask."

Sakura had to beg and plead but, eventually, her mother agreed to allow her to have the others over on New Year's Eve provided that they were quieter than mice. Since they were going to be gone for a lot of the night and sitting on the roof for the rest of it, Sakura had no qualms about making that promise.

Surprisingly, Shisui was much easier to get to go along with her plans. Sakura told him what she wanted and, without asking questions, he said, "Okay. I'll leave the porch lights on for you. They go all the way around the house because the veranda goes all the way around it. If you need to get inside of the house, I'll leave the side door open for you. And Itachi and I both leave our windows open. We both sleep at the back of the house."

"Thanks!" Sakura enthused.

Everything was set up. Sakura just had to wait until New Year's Eve.

On New Year's Eve, Ino, Shikamaru, Choji, and Fu came over to Sakura's house for a slumber party. When they knocked at the door, Sakura was helping her mother in the kitchen. Sakura ran to answer them.

"Hi!" Sakura said as she yanked the door open. Late afternoon light slanted in around them, shadowing their features and turning them into a crowd of shadows. "Please come in! Have you eaten? We're making dinner and udon for later."

Since it was New Year's Eve, the tea stand was closed. It had been a few days earlier and would remain closed for a few days after New Year's Day. Sakura's mama was as relaxed and happy as she ever got.

"Sakura's a really good cook," Shikamaru said with a teasing look toward his mother.

"You are?" asked Shikamaru's mother as her hand darted out to flick Shikamaru's ear.

"Ow!" gasped Shikamaru. Rubbing his ear, he scowled at his mother. "Troublesome."

"Sakura's mother owns a tea stand," Ino explained as she and the others filed into the house and took their shoes off near the front door. "She helps with it a lot."

"It smells delicious," Ino's father said.

All of her friends had brought their own house slippers, including Fu who looked terribly uncomfortable. Sakura fetched the guest slippers for the three adults. Choji's parents, who owned a much larger restaurant, were probably still at work. The larger restaurants in the village stayed open all night on New Year's Eve and throughout the New Year's holiday.

"Why don't you stay for dinner?" Sakura mother asked. At some point, she had come to stand in the doorway between the kitchen and the front room. "There's more than enough for everyone."

"We don't want to impose," demurred Shikamaru's mother.

"Are you sure?" Shikamaru's father asked. His wife elbowed him in the side.

It did not take much persuasion from Sakura' mother to get the adults to stay for dinner but Shikamaru's parents insisted on going out and fetching a couple of bottles of sake and some sweets. They took Shikamaru and Choji with them, leaving Ino, Ino's dad, and Fu with Sakura and her mother.

Ino's dad insisted on helping Sakura's mama with dinner, Ino filling up all of the empty spaces in the kitchen with her happy chatter. Sakura took advantage of the lull and her Ino-shaped distraction to fold a turtle for Fu. When she passed it to him, Fu caught her hand and held onto it, just like Ino would have done. Ino's blue eyes tracked the motion and lingered on their joined hands, her mouth quirking into a small, pleased smile.

Fu did not let go, even when the other parents got back. Ino, who had claimed Sakura's other hand as her own, did not seem to mind Fu mimicking her.

The parents all stayed so late that they got to eat udon and, after midnight, they helped Sakura's mother herd Sakura and her friends to and through the shrine near the river. Afterwards, they walked everyone back to Sakura's house and then disappeared into the shadows the way that most grownup ninja did.

An hour later, everyone was settled in palates in Sakura's room and Sakura's mother was turning out the light.

"I'll see you kids in the morning," said Sakura's mother from the doorway. Sakura could see the line of her arm in the soft light from Sakura's nightlight. "Good night."

"Night, Mama," Sakura said among the chorus of goodnights from most of her friends. (Fu was still not much of a talker, even to people that he knew pretty well.)

Sakura was nearly asleep and dreaming when Ino shook her awake.

"Sakura!" she hissed. "Are we going to do this thing or not?"

"M'awake."

"So am I," Shikamaru said gloomily. He was sitting up in his palate, his face in his hands.

Nearby, Fu was trying to shake Choji awake.

"I don't wanna," Choji grumbled. "I'm sleeping. Go away."

"Choji!" hissed Ino as she pulled her jersey over her pajama top. It was still really cold outside. "Get up!"

"No."

"Choji," said Sakura as she pulled her trousers on under her nightgown. "I'll give you my lunch for three days if you get up."

"Two weeks."

"Five days."

"Done," said Choji as he pushed Fu's hands away. "Stop it. I'm up."

In short order, they were all dressed, everyone had lines of cranes draped across their shoulders, and they were sneaking out of Sakura's apartment as quietly as they knew how. Only Fu was actually silent.

The walk to the Uchiha ghetto, which was very long when the sun was up, seemed _even longer_ in the dark. Even though there were lamps lit on along all of the biggest roads, they kept to the smaller footpaths and side alleys where they were less likely to run into an adult from the Nara, Akimichi, or Yamanaka clans. The path that they had chosen was shadowy at best and too dark for Sakura to see her hand in front of her face at its worst parts. Shikamaru, who had an affinity for the dark, and Ino and Fu, who could both see in the dark, had to lead Sakura and Choji by the hands. As they slunk through the shadowy walkways, Sakura could hear distant sounds of merriment coming from the main streets.

It was an utter relief to see that, true to his word, Shisui had left the outside lights on for Sakura.

"We'll wait here," Shikamaru told Sakura as everyone draped lines of paper cranes across Sakura's shoulders and arms. "Good luck."

"Thanks," Sakura whispered as her stomach busily twisted itself into knots. She left her teammates standing at the foot of the house's front steps.

When Sakura tiptoed up the home's front steps, the third one creaked noisily under her weight. Sakura cringed and someone behind her hissed. It was not a good start to an infiltration mission. Sakura soldered onward anyway.

Shisui had said that the veranda wrapped all the way around the house. She was to follow it around to the back of the house where Itachi's bedroom was, which meant that it probably overlooked the garden behind the house. The harsh overhead lights starkly illuminated the floorboards in the center of the walkway, leaving the ones at the edges shrouded in soft shadows. Being able to see the floor boards in no way helped Sakura to spot the creaky ones before she stepped on them. Nevertheless, Sakura sneaked along the porch as best she could, the strings of paper cranes swaying and rustling against the fabric of her coat. She went along the side of the house and around its back, peeking through each window in turn.

Sakura looked into an empty kitchen, a bare room, Sasuke's bedroom, and Shisui's room in turn. Sasuke was asleep and Shisui was lounging in his futon and reading a thin book. He tilted his head back, winked at Sakura, and very deliberately tipped his head to the left, indicating that Sakura should try the room next door.

When Sakura peeped through the next window, Itachi was laying on his back in his futon. His body was relaxed and his dark hair was loose against his crisp, white pillow. Even though his dark eyelashes were resting against the curves of his smooth cheeks, Sakura knew that Itachi was probably awake. He probably knew the moment that she stepped onto the walkway in front of his house. It hurt that Itachi wanted to pretend so that he could continue to avoid her.

Sakura's eyes blurred but she blinked hard and tightened her fingers on the wooden windowsill, refusing to cry. Now was not the time to be a big crybaby. Instead, Sakura worked at prying the window sash up. Shisui had promised that Itachi always left it open but the bottom window sash was stiff and hard to move. When the sash started to shift, it lurched and made a horrible squeaking sound.

Cringing, Sakura immediately stopped tugging on the windowsill. She glanced over at Itachi, who was still pretending to be asleep, then heaved a small sigh of relief. Her shoulders shifted up and down, rustling her shirt's fabric against her paper creations.

Sakura went back to easing Itachi's window sash up. Every time that the bottom window frame scraped against the window's wooden frame, Sakura winced and peeped at Itachi, who was still gamely pretending to be asleep. When Itachi's awful window was finally up, Sakura huffed a sigh of pure relief.

Then she pulled the lines of cranes over her head and carefully arranged them across Itachi's windowsill. It took her a few tries to get them perfectly balanced so that they were not in danger of falling into Itachi's room or out onto the porch's wooden floorboards.

When the cranes were arranged to her liking, Sakura shut her eyes and concentrated on tapping into her chakra core like Iruka-sensei had taught them to do.

Sakura's chakra responded readily, fizzing and bubbling up in her like a shaken bottle of carbonated lightening. It bubbled up and up and into her mouth, pooling there just like she wanted it to. Relieved, Sakura exhaled a slow, shaky breath through her nose and opened her eyes.

Itachi's room was dark but Sakura could see Itachi's outline. He was sitting up and facing her, looking directly at Sakura for the first time in months. The light from the porch, which was softened by Sakura's position in front of the bedroom's window, bleached Itachi's skin and sketched the sweet curve of his cheeks. Deep, shadowed gullies rested along his worry lines, around his eyes, and across his mouth. Itachi's special eyes glowed red like embers in the darkness.

Sakura's heart thrilled and the chakra in her mouth churned with her excitement.

Her mouth full of chakra and getting fuller by the moment, Sakura looked away from Itachi, first to her cranes and then at her hands. She watcheed as her hands painstakingly formed the correct seals, naming each in her head as they move through it. The wind jutsu beginning to take shape in her mouth, she sucked in a deep breath. Sakura breathed ever so gently on the chains of paper cranes, air and chakra catching their tiny, forms.

On paper wings, they took flight.

The cranes followed the path of Sakura's chakra, a flock that fluttered and soared across Itachi's room, over his futon, and around his still form. To her own eyes, the cranes were streams of indistinct movements in the dark. Occasionally, individual cranes flickered with color whenever a bit of glossy paper or a particular pattern passed through the far reaches of the porch's light.

But Ino had assured Sakura that, to Yamanaka eyes, the flight of her cranes was like watching a pinwheel of color twirl around her body. Ino had promised that Sakura's jutsu was beautiful. Shikamaru had promised that the Uchiha's special eyes could see in the dark, not as well as Yamanaka eyes but better than most.

Watching Itachi as he watched her cranes, Sakura knew that Ino and Shikamaru were both right.

Itachi turned left and right, as if he was trying to see all of Sakura's cranes at once, leaning into the lights' reach when it will improve his view of the cranes. His shoulders were relaxed and his hands were loose against his blankets. Itachi's expression, which was soft and relaxed and wondering, made Sakura's chest ache. She tried to fix that moment in her mind, wanting to always remember Itachi like that.

When the stream of her breath and chakra began to thin and falter, Sakura was sad to feel such a beautiful moment's ending approach. With her last puff of air, Sakura directed the strings of cranes to Itachi. They fluttered around him one last time then settled in his lap like the first fall of snow, a tangle of paper and strings and Sakura's wishes for the future.  
  
With one last glance at Itachi's pale face and a wave, Sakura turned and ran down the veranda without bothering to try to close the awful window, her feet thumping against the wooden deck.  
  
The others were all waiting for Sakura at the front gate.  
  
"Well?" hissed Ino.  
  
"It went just like we practiced!" Sakura said excitedly, her voice pitched barely below her regular speaking voice. She was just too happy to whisper properly!  
  
"Great," said Shikamaru hurriedly. "Talk about it later. Let's get out of here."  
  
They hustled through Konohagakure's darkened streets, scurrying through the streetlights' puddles of revealing light to the safety of the darkness surrounding them. Along the way, Choji stubbed his foot, Sakura stepped in some smelly goo, and everyone except Fu tromped on dried twigs, noisy bits of trash, and at least one unfortunate mouse.  
  
They got back just in time to scramble up to the roof of Sakura's building and watch the sun rise and exchange their wishes for the new year.  
  
  
  
Ino and Shikamaru's dads happened to arrive just in time for breakfast. Sakura's mama asked if they would like to stay and eat with them.  
  
"Are you sure?" asked Ino's dad as he shrugged off his coat.  
  
"We'd hate to impose," added Shikamaru's dad as he toed off his sandals.  
  
"I'm sure," said Sakura's smiling mother. "Sakura, lay two more places."  
  
Like last night, there were too many people for everyone to eat at the table. But, like last night, it did not seem to matter. Everyone seemed to have a really good time.  
  
After breakfast, the dads herded everyone else into their cold weather gear and then out of the house. When it was just Sakura and her mama in the house, Sakura went back to her room for a mid-morning nap.  
  
When Sakura awoke from her nap, she found her New Year's wish sitting on her windowsill. He was bigger and his eyes were darker than Sakura remembered them being. His face was too thin and gaunt, the lines under his eyes seemed longer and deeper, and his hair was longer and messier than Sakura had ever seen it. He was wearing a heavy winter Uchiha clan jacket and holding a bunch of yellow roses that were tied by a pair of red ribbons.  
  
Itachi smiled, the expression lighting up his thin, gaunt face. "Happy New Year's, Sakura."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Title:** On Paper Wings  
>  **Fandom:** Naruto  
>  **Rating:** G  
>  **Content Notes:** None  
>  **Disclaimer:** I have no rights to or within the Naruto franchise, copyright, character or trademark. This is for fun, not profit.  
>  **Summary:** It takes Sakura one thousand cranes to discover the wish in her heart, struggling to be born. It takes Itachi a thousand cranes to find the courage to articulate the wish in his heart, even to himself.  
>  **Additional Notes:** This fic fills the "unrequited pining" square on my Hurt/Comfort Bingo card and the "unrequited love/pining" square on my trope bingo card. This particular chapter also fills the fic_promptly prompt of "author's choice, author's choice, grave matters."

"Itachi!" Sakura shrieked, thrashing her way free of her blankets. Her bare feet thumped against the hardwood floor and then she was rushing directly at him. Itachi forcibly quashed his reflexive desire to leap out of her way. If he moved, Sakura would most likely fall through her bedroom window.

Sakura hit him with such force and enthusiasm that it knocked the air from Itachi's lungs and nearly sent them both tumbling through the window anyway. Fortunately for them both, he had impeccable balance and she had a surprisingly strong grip.

"I missed you!" Sakura exclaimed, seemingly oblivious as to how close she had come to plunging through her bedroom window. Not that Itachi would have allowed her to be hurt if such a thing had happened. "Never run away again!"

Somehow, Sakura managed to find it within herself to squeeze him even tighter. It felt nice.

Itachi carefully closed his arms around Sakura. Thanks to Sasuke's emotional upset over the last few months, he had improved his hugging technique. Judging by the way that Sakura relaxed against him, she seemed to appreciate the difference.

"I didn't go anywhere," Itachi told her, his gaze fixed on her desk. Several textbooks were scattered across it. "I just didn't come to see you."

"I know!" Sakura exclaimed, stepping back and out of his embrace. She hit Itachi on the forearm, a light stinging slap against his bare skin that shocked Itachi. "I'm angry with you about that!"

Itachi winced and allowed his expression to fade, his face falling into its more usual lines.

"Don't do that!" Sakura exclaimed, moving to slap Itachi's arm again. He let her blow land in a crack of sound and unpleasant sensation. "I hate it when you run and hide from me! We're going to fight and make up like friends should, Itachi!"

"I don't..." Itachi's voice faded as he failed to find the words that he wished to say.

"I know that you don't know much about friends or people!" Sakura interrupted, sounding equal parts exasperated, furious, and determined. "And I know that it's hard for you to talk about things! But if we're really friends, you're going to have to _be_ my friend!"

"By fighting with you?" Itachi said dubiously.

"Yes!"

Itachi hesitated, feeling unsure.

That was how serious disputes were generally settled in the Uchiha clan and this seemed like a fairly serious dispute to Itachi.

 _But I don't want to hurt her,_ Itachi thought unhappily. _And I don't want to lose her again either._

"Itachi!"

Itachi's hand darted out to push Sakura's shoulder, hard. She tumbled to the floor in a mess of flailing arms and landed badly. Her shocked expression as she fell, her pained expression when she landed, and the smack of her flesh against the hardwood hurt Itachi.

Sakura laid sprawled out on her bedroom floor for a taut moment, her limbs splayed and her nightgown tangled around her calves, before she shouted, "Itachi! Why'd you do that?"

"You said that we have to fight," he replied, confused. "And you hit me. Twice."

"I don't want to fight you with my fists!" Sakura snapped, her voice still raised. "I wanted to fight with you using words! Didn't you ever go to the Shinobi Academy? It's one of the first lessons that they teach everyone!"

"Oh," said Itachi, feeling small and stupid and off-balance. He had felt that way a lot recently but he was never supposed to feel that way with Sakura.

Worse, Itachi had the unfortunate suspicion that he was no longer capable of this thing that Sakura required of him. Peaceful conflict resolution had been important during his time at the shinobi academy and on his genin team but, despite possessing many fond memories of his genin team, Itachi found that he did not quite remember the trick for reconciling with another without stabbing or killing that person as part of the conversation. The knowledge had been scoured out of him during his time in Root, where disputes between members were usually settled by Danzo or with a private assassination.

But there was no one to make Sakura reconcile with Itachi and, even when he had hated her, Itachi refused to consider killing Sakura. (And, even if she someday possessed the skill to assassinate him, Itachi liked to think that Sakura would never kill him either.)

"Never mind," Sakura huffed as she scrambled to her feet. "And I'm sorry that I hit you. Both times."

"It's okay?" Itachi offered because he was fairly certain that there was nothing that Sakura could do to hurt him physically, although she had proven adept at hurting him in other, deeper ways. To prove that everything was fine, Itachi smiled his best smile at her.

Frowning, Sakura studied him for several long moments.

"It's _not_ okay," Sakura finally announced. "You're just trying to smooth things over with a smile. I know about that now."

Itachi wondered who had told her and why.

"Just say what you really think, Itachi," Sakura said earnestly. "I promise that I won't make fun of you or be mad. Well, I might get mad at you but I won't _stay_ mad. And it's the only way that you're ever going to get what you want."

It seemed a strange and impossible thing. Expressing personal desires to an outside party and then having them met was not a power that Itachi had ever previously possessed. Before, it had been his duty to listen and obey when others - the clan's elders, his parents, the Hokage, Danzo, and various superiors - gave orders.

Itachi studied Sakura carefully, noting her open posture and her sincere expression, before he experimentally said, "I disliked it when you slapped me. I don't want you to hit me anymore."

"Okay." Sakura nodded her head in agreement. "No more hitting. And I'm sorry that I hit you." When she reached out to him, Itachi tensed but let her put her hand on his arm and rub the place that she had hit. Even though he had not been injured, it felt nice, comforting even.

Sakura's smile lit up her small face.

"You've gotten better at this," she noted, her warm little hand a stark contrast to the cool air at his back. Itachi had closed the window behind himself but cold still crept in.

"Sasuke required it," Itachi admitted. The upheaval, the clan's fall from grace, their parents' internment, and the rumors that Itachi had planned to block the rebellion by murdering their entire clan had distressed Sasuke greatly. Improving his ability to give Sasuke tactile comfort had been necessary for both of their emotional well beings.

In the present, Sakura's hand stopped on his arm. She said, "Itachi, I really hated it when you stopped coming around. At first, I thought that you were avoiding me because you didn't like me anymore."

Itachi stayed quiet because, for a time, he had hated Sakura intensely for betraying his purpose to the Yamanaka clan head. He had missed her companionship long before his hatred had begun to ease towards forgiveness. Itachi was still uncertain if he had entirely forgiven Sakura for her betrayal. Telling her that, however, seemed counterproductive.

"But I think now that maybe you just don't know what to do about people," Sakura continued. "Or how to be mad at them and still be their friend. The next time that you're upset with me, I want you to come and tell me so that we can talk about it the way that friends are supposed to do."

Itachi did not know who these 'friends' were but they were obviously neither Uchiha nor (former) Root members. He envied them their good fortune.

"Can we talk about it now?" Sakura asked.

"No," Itachi quickly replied. Although his memories of his time in ANBU's holding cells and the interrogation itself had begun to fade, his emotional response to them had not. Itachi chose not to dwell on such things. Since Sakura was beginning to scowl at him again, Itachi added, "Not yet."

Not ever, if Itachi had his way. His words were a conciliatory gesture that Itachi had no intention of following through on.

Clearly, no one had told Sakura about Root's other methods of smoothing things over, because her expression eased, her hand resumed its stroking motion, and she nodded.

Itachi relaxed. The silence that settled between them was comfortable, even if the way that Sakura was studying him made Itachi nervous. He wondered what she saw now when she looked at him.

For himself, he saw a taller girl with a less childish face. She was as happy as she had ever been but now Sakura was more confident and less quiet. Itachi liked the changes in Sakura, even if they disquieted him.

"Why did you bring the Nara clan head and his heir to my parents' house?" Itachi asked. When it had happened, it had distressed him terribly. At the time, Itachi had not wanted to know what Sakura had thought that she needed the head jonin's protection to say to him.

"I needed someone to walk me." Even though his expression did not shift, Sakura must have seen something in it because she added, "I can't walk all the way to the Uchiha clan's ghetto all by myself. It's a rule. So my friend Shikamaru asked his dad to take us."

"Oh," Itachi said, more as an acknowledgement of the information than anything else. Itachi wondered if Sasuke had rules like that and if he was supposed to have been enforcing them.

"Did you like my flying crane jutsu?" Sakura asked.

 _"Yes,"_ Itachi quickly replied, a smile escaping him. "It was beautiful."

Beaming her widest, happiest smile, one that betrayed her assortment of children's and adult teeth, Sakura said, "I made up that jutsu especially for you!" and something clenched in Itachi's chest. It hurt so sweetly that he gasped and drew back, away from her touch. "Itachi?"

He shook his head, Then, at the beginnings of hurt in Sakura's expression, leaned forward to hug her, as gently as if she were Sasuke. Into her rosy hair, he murmured, "Thank you."

"I'm glad that you like it," Sakura replied, her face pressed into his side as she relaxed against him. Pulling back, she asked, "Would you like some tea? Or something to eat? We made lots of food for New Year's."

"No thank you," Itachi replied. Offering her the forgotten roses, he added, "I only dropped by to give you these."

Smiling at him again, Sakura accepted his gift. "Thank you. Will you come to see me again?"

"Yes."

"Soon?"

"Very," he promised.

After leaving Sakura, Itachi slunk back to the Uchiha ghetto, taking care not to be seen.

Within the clans, it was believed that the first visit and visitor of the new year set the tone for the rest of the year. Even if he was merely an interim clan head, a clan's headman was supposed to visit all of his kinsmen's homes first. Within the Uchiha clan, It was considered a great honor to be the first family visited by the clan's headman, even if that headman was feared and disliked by most of his relatives.

But Sakura had taken some rather extraordinary pains to be Itachi's first visitor of the new year. And, even though he was neither her first visit or visitor - that honor had gone to the Nara, Akimichi, and Yamanaka clans - Itachi had still wanted to visit Sakura first. It had felt important, even though there was no importance attached to who the visitor visited first in the new year.

At home, Itachi crept into the house through his bedroom window, bathed, and dressed in the traditional attire. Disliking how big his father's clothes looked on him, Itachi used genjutsu to make them appear to fit.

"I will visit our house last," Itachi informed Sasuke and Shisui over lunch. When his parents had made the new year's visits, they had always left before breakfast. But then, Itachi's parents had been popular within their clan. Although Itachi was the epitome of what a Uchiha was supposed to be, he had always been admired but rarely liked by his kinsmen.

"Understandable," Shisui replied, his tone untroubled.

"Yes, aniki," Sasuke mumbled, trying to imitate Shisui but only succeeding at sounding hurt.

"I would return here first, Sasuke," Itachi explained, "but it is a political necessity to visit Fuuma first. I must court his support for my nominations to the clan's council of elders. There are a few others that I must see for similar purposes after that. It seems prudent to visit the rest of the clan in a spiral pattern off of the last house before coming home to you and Shisui."

"Oh," said Sasuke, visibly brightening. "Okay, aniki!"

After lunch, Itachi took his leave of Shisui and Sasuke, flicking the latter in the forehead and saying, "Later, I'm afraid, little brother."

"Aniki!" Sasuke protested, scowling, his hand pressed to his forehead.

Smiling, Itachi exited the household to begin his rounds of visits.

Even though he had been the interim clan head for several long (miserable) months, Itachi knew that, outside of Sasuke, Shisui, and the clan's youngest children, few of his relatives desired prolonged interaction with him. The rumors, which had begun circulating even before Itachi left the hospital, had done nothing for Itachi's popularity. If anything, they had escalated the tensions between Itachi and his remaining kinsmen.

Itachi was not particularly distressed by the lengthening gap between himself and his clan. Sasuke, however, regularly fought their cousins for Itachi's remaining honor during the day and quietly cried over the rift at night. Itachi felt _awful_ about Sasuke's continuing distress.

But now was not the time to dwell on it. Instead, Itachi turned his attention toward his objective: being pleasant enough to garner Fuuma's support.

The visit with Fuuma went better than Itachi anticipated but the ones after that were more in line with Itachi's original projections. All of Itachi's remaining visits were mercifully brief and perfunctory in nature. Itachi made his last visit, the one to his parents' house, around dinnertime. When Itachi knocked, there was the sound of a child's scrambling and then the door burst open to reveal a flushed and beaming Sasuke.

"Aniki!" exclaimed Sasuke, holding the door wider and stepping backwards. "Come in!"

"Thank you, Sasuke," Itachi replied, ruffling Sasuke's hair as he passed him. It was a relief to be home with Sasuke and Shisui. "I'm home, Shisui!"

"Welcome home," called Shisui, leaning out of the kitchen. "You're just in time."

Dinner was a mostly quiet affair. In Itachi's estimation, it was far superior to previous dinners at that table. For one thing, he liked everyone there. For another, Sasuke almost single-handedly carried the conversation. Sasuke was a much more interesting conversationalist than their parents had ever been.

After dinner, Itachi helped to clean up, read for awhile, and then got ready for bed. In the safety of his room, with his door locked and his windows drawn, Itachi retrieved Sakura's stuffed tiger from its hiding place.

It was old, worn, and an oddly comforting shape. When Itachi had begun sleeping with Sakura's stuffed tiger, it had still smelled like Sakura. Even though he had still been furious at her, hated her even, that had been comforting too.

As he lay in bed that night, Sakura's stuffed tiger tucked under one arm and his sharingan activated so that he could watch Sakura's cranes bump and rustle against the wall of his room with every turn of the overhead fan, Itachi thought about Shisui and Sakura.

Shisui had always been everything that Itachi aspired to be. And, despite Root, ANBU, and the way that his stomach clenched at the name Uchiha, Itachi cared deeply for Shisui. Sometimes, he even thought that Shisui might care very much for him too. But Shisui had never been a comfort to Itachi.

Sakura had always been a comfort to Itachi, even though she had never been anything that he should have taken notice of or cared for. And, until her betrayal, Itachi had never doubted her feelings for him. But, even if her betrayal had resulted purely from a difference in ideology, Itachi himself now felt ambivalent towards Sakura. He loved her but he might also hate her. She had betrayed him but he missed her companionship. He slept with her stuffed animal at night and, until recently, avoided her during the day.

Folding a thousand paper cranes, stringing them into twenty-five sets, inventing a wind jutsu to make them fly, persuading Shikaku and his son to walk her across the village, and then sneaking back on New Year's Eve with a Yamanaka-Nara-Akimichi formation as her escort was a great deal of effort to go to for someone, especially someone that you had betrayed to ANBU Intelligence. It bespoke a level of caring that Itachi had thought gone from their relationship.

 _It's confusing,_ Itachi decided unhappily, once again feeling small and stupid and off-balance. _Find your target, focus on that, and let the distractions fall away. Your target is... the secret hidden within the paper cranes. Are they like flowers? Or is it another language entirely?_

His focus narrowed to a discrete target, Itachi's uncomfortable feelings dissipated. Briefly tightening his arm around the stuffed tiger, Itachi allowed himself to relax into sleep.

Itachi infiltrated the chunin's library to look for information on paper folding or cranes. Finding nothing that pertained to Sakura's many paper cranes, he next visited the genin's library. It too lacked the information that Itachi sought. His interest piqued, Itachi visited his clan's secret library. Nothing.

On the first day of business after the New Year's holidays, Itachi went to visit Sakura and her mother at their tea stand.

When he got there, Itachi quietly stood in the shadows and spied on Sakura with his sharingan as other customers came and went.

Sakura was both bigger and taller than Itachi remembered, taking up more space behind the counter both literally and figuratively. There was far more confidence in her movements. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright, and her fine pink hair crackled with static electricity from her fuzzy red sweater. In her hair, she wore the red ribbons that Itachi had given her as a New Year's gift. But she still scampered up and down the length of the counter, smiling and chattering with the customers standing on the other side of it. It was a relief to see that, for all of the changes that had occurred in Sakura, she was still the same as she always had been.

Ignoring his own discomfort, Itachi approached the stand during a lull and was gratified when Sakura greeted him with genuine delight.

He ordered soup, onigiri and his favorite tea and enjoyed the way that Sakura and her mother fussed over him. When Sakura's mother went back to the kitchen, Itachi asked, "Do the paper cranes have a meaning?"

He would be disappointed if they did not.

"Yes, of course," Sakura replied with a quick smile. "Would you like me to tell you?"

"No, thank you," replied Itachi, who was savoring the mystery of it. The paper cranes were the most interesting thing to have happened to him since she had quashed his last assassination mission.

Itachi visited the libraries again and then, finding nothing pertinent, began to go to the places that Sakura visited most often, eliminating them as sources of information one by one. He only visited the civilian's library to be thorough. Itachi hardly expected to find anything useful there. Instead, he found what he was looking for in a book of legends from the children's section.

"What was your wish?" Itachi asked the next time that he saw Sakura.

Looking up from the onigiri that she was making, Sakura replied, "I can't tell anyone until after I put the cranes outside and let my wish out into the world."

"But I like them," Itachi protested, testing out that thing from New Year's.

"You can't keep them if you want my wish to come true," Sakura replied.

Disappointed, Itachi frown. He had expressed what he wanted and was still not allowed to have it. Sakura had still denied him.

It was a flicker of expression, there and gone again in an instant, but Sakura must have noticed it because she quickly added, "I could make you more cranes, Itachi. Or, if you have a wish in your heart that is struggling to be born, you could make a thousand cranes of your own."

"Will it work if you don't know your wish?" Itachi asked, feeling uncertain. When he was little, before the academy or Root or even Sasuke, Itachi had daydreamed, wanted, and wished for things. He had given the habit up, though, as he had gotten older. Or maybe it had been stolen from him. The last time that he could remember wishing for something, he had been ten.

 _But surely, surely I want something,_ Itachi thought. _Everyone wants something for themselves, except for Root's members. And I am no longer one of Konohagakure no Sato's Roots. I should want something for myself, even if it's impossible._

"Of course!" Sakura said cheerfully. Her hands were quickly shaping and stuffing onigiri. "I didn't even know what my wish was until I finished my thousand! Making the cranes isn't just about the number. It's about getting to the thousand."

"Will you teach me to fold a crane?" Itachi asked.

"If you want," Sakura replied as she put the freshly made onigiri away. "Here, we'll start now."

So saying, she cleaned her hands off and fetched two napkins. Itachi caught on easily enough but he spent the rest of the afternoon learning to fold animal shapes anyway.

All of the origami squares possessed uncomfortably bright coloring. Itachi dutifully bought a pack of five hundred squares anyway. Folding the first five cranes was fairly easy and the next ten were boring but, trusting in Sakura's opinion, Itachi persevered. He forced himself to remain faithful to a strict five cranes per day folding schedule, despite the fact that he only needed to fold three cranes a day to be successful. Itachi was sitting at his father's desk, folding his twenty-first crane instead of reviewing the clan's financial statements, when Shisui caught him.

"Not you too," Shisui groaned. "It's a waste of time!"

Hesitating, Itachi looked up from his current project. "Do you want something?"

"I live here," Shisui tartly reminded Itachi.

In order to more easily care for Sasuke while the rest of his family was incarcerated, Shisui had moved into Itachi's parents' house. He had stayed even after Itachi had been released from ANBU's custody. Many de facto families had formed that way during the initial interrogations and, to Itachi's knowledge, most had remained intact even after ANBU had begun to grudgingly release some of the detained from custody. Others, like Sasuke and Itachi's parents, were still undergoing interrogation and, potentially, judgement regarding the clan's more clandestine activities.

"I didn't mean 'do you want something at this particular moment?'," Itachi replied. "But, in general, do you want something for yourself? Do you strive towards anything that is not for the benefit of the village?"

"Of course not. The village is everything. We are the Roots that exist in the shadows, holding it aloft, nourishing it, and protecting it, even if it never knows of our care."

"There is no more Root," Itachi reminded Shisui. "Since we are part of the everything again, we should want things for ourselves, even if our desires are impossible to achieve."

Shisui stared at Itachi for a very long moment. He was without expression. Then Shisui turned on his heel and left. Itachi resumed folding his twenty-first crane.

Shisui stayed gone from Itachi's immediate sight, but not his house, for several days.

One day, Shisui, who was discreetly crouched on the ceiling in a corner of Itachi's study, announced, "I fail to see how folding an unreasonable number of paper cranes will improve your life."

Itachi, who had been perfectly well aware of his cousin's scrutiny, was unperturbed. Without looking up from the report that he was reading, Itachi replied, "It's not about the cranes. It's about the journey to one thousand."

When Itachi finally looked up, Shisui was already gone.

Itachi's first insight into himself came the day that he failed to fold cranes sixty-six through seventy. It had been a long, terrible day. First, he had had to endure the Clans' Council and then give evidence to a full sitting of the combined Civilian Council, Clans' Council, the interim Council of Elders, and the interim Hokage, Jiraiya-sama, At his very late lunch, Itachi had felt too drained to do more than eat. Afterwards, Itachi had had to collect seven of his kinsmen from ANBU's hospital and escort them back to the Uchiha district and their families. That took awhile. And then there was his daily practice, dinner, and Sasuke.

After Sasuke went to bed, Shisui went out to practice and Itachi went to his room to stare at his paper cranes as they bounced and rustled in the air currents coming off of his overhead fan. It was almost like meditating.

Losing Root and becoming the Uchiha's interim clan head had decreased the overall number of people who could give Itachi orders without increasing his own powers of self-determination. Worse, it had actually lessened his powers of autonomy. It was now his duty to consider the well-being of his disgraced and floundering clan, both individually and as a whole, and then act accordingly. He was responsible for and answerable to hundreds of people that he should have long since murdered, people who had not liked him to begin with and loathed him now. People that Itachi actively disliked.

Itachi hated being his clan's headman every bit as much as he had always suspected that he would.

He deeply resented the revelation. Itachi resented it so much that he refused to fold a single paper crane for over a week.

One afternoon, Shisui invaded Itachi's office. He dumped a stack of origami paper on top of Itachi's paperwork, brightly colored squares of paper slipping over each other to cascade across the width of Itachi's desk.

 _"Never_ tell your civilian about this," snarled Shisui.

Itachi nodded and Shisui pulled up a chair.

Ignoring Shisui's baleful glare, Itachi folded cranes numbers sixty-six through sixty-eight while teaching Shisui how to fold a paper wishing crane. They folded their next ten cranes in comfortable silence.

Every day after that, Shisui invaded Itachi's office to fold cranes with him.

On the day that Itachi was scheduled to fold cranes ninety-six through one hundred, Itachi pocketed a handful of origami squares and went to visit the Haruno Tea Stand. He found Sakura standing behind the counter, alone and wearing a fuzzy blue sweater.

"It's not working," he informed her. "I gained more insight on the day that I failed to fold cranes than I did on the days that I actually folded them."

"It's been nearly a month since you last came around," Sakura replied. "I've been worried about you. I'd have come looking for you but I can't wander around the village by myself and your cousin Shisui hasn't been around since before New Year's. I hate that our friendship is so uneven."

_"Sakura."_

Itachi glared at Sakura. Apparently still unaware of his general reputation, Sakura glared back at him.

"Fine," Itachi gritted. "I'll come to see you next week."

"Excellent!" Sakura enthused, her bad temper immediately falling away. She began to arrange a plate of onigiri. "But don't come on Thursday because I won't be here then."

"Okay."

"So what do you think about when you're folding your cranes?"

"The thing that I'm taking time out of to fold paper cranes."

"Well, there's your problem," Sakura replied. She set the plate of onigiri onto the bit of counter between them. "It's like practicing a kata or meditating."

Itachi stared at Sakura, nonplussed.

Apparently understanding him, Sakura elaborated, saying, "It's not about making a bazillion paper cranes. That would be horribly boring. It's about the wish. When you fold your cranes, you should be thinking about your wish or at least the things that you're feeling. It's really a way of organizing your thoughts and feelings so that you can make sense of them and discover what you really want. The thing that I ended up wishing for isn't the thing that I thought I wanted at all."

"Oh," said Itachi. Feeling more confident, Itachi said, "I didn't order these."

"I know. They're my afternoon snack." Picking up one of the riceballs, Sakura generously added, "You can have some if you like."

Itachi hesitated until Sakura bit into hers and hummed, "Mmm, seaweed."

Onigiri filled with seaweed was one of Itachi's favorites. He hastily claimed one of the riceballs for himself.

"Thank you, Sakura."

Sakura beamed at him. "You're welcome."

Itachi ordered tea and dango and sat at the counter, folding paper cranes. Knowing now that the exercise was meant to be boring and repetitive, Itachi tentatively let his thoughts wander.

They did not wander far.

Mostly, he worried about his responsibilities to the clan and whether or not his recommendations for the Uchiha clan's Council of Elders would be approved by the rest of the clan.

Since entertaining those sorts of thoughts was not the purpose of the exercise, Itachi forcibly reined his thoughts in again. He focused on making each crease and fold perfect. Then, since he was already on the topic of perfection, Itachi considered Root's goal to create the perfect shinobi.

Root's goals had proven to be flawed, loyalty to the organization's leader supplanting their loyalty to the village, but there was no denying that Root had made he, Shisui, and the others strong. They were all cuts above their peers, comrades, and kinsmen, even in a war-loving clan like the Uchiha.

 _But, if our goals were flawed, perhaps our methodologies had also been imperfect,_ mused Itachi, his fingers folding quick, crisp lines into the square of paper before him.

Extensive training, isolation, and a graduation test that had been outlawed even in Mist had not entirely removed its operatives' need for human interaction. Shisui had sought it in his lover and still sought it in Itachi and Sasuke. Itachi had sought it (and still sought it) in Shisui, Sasuke, and Sakura. The others must have secretly seen to their needs in their own fashions.

Feeling greatly daring, Itachi thought, _Maybe_ _becoming a perfectly obedient and completely emotionless tool for the village isn't the greatest perfection that a shinobi can obtain. But then, what is?_

Despite folding three more cranes, Itachi could not figure that out for himself.

When he left the tea stand, Itachi took his new understanding of the cranes back to Shisui, who merely nodded and asked if they should start over.

"I don't think so," Itachi said uneasily. "I suppose that we'll know at the end."

Rather than answering, Shisui folded another crane.

When next he went to see Sakura at the tea stand, it was Thursday, Sasuke was training on the dock, and Itachi had folded one hundred and twenty cranes.

"Hello, Itachi!" chirped Sakura, who was sharing the space behind the counter with a civilian girl. "How's it going?"

Itachi reported his progress and ordered a meal. When Sakura brought him his soup, onigiri, and jasmine tea, Itachi was folding a paper crane. As she arranged his meal in front of him, Itachi asked, "What do you think the true nature of perfection is?"

It was something that Itachi had been considering since his last visit to the tea stand.

"I don't know," Sakura replied. "I guess I'd have to think about it."

"It's a difficult question," Itachi agreed.

Itachi was beginning to relax when a gaggle of academy age children wandered into the tea stand. Three of the children, a Yamanaka boy, a dark-haired boy, and a blue-skinned boy, were obviously former Root operatives like Itachi himself. The remaining members of the group were Nara, Yamanaka, and Akimichi children. A blonde Yamanaka girl around Sakura's age called, "Hi, Sakura! Ready to go view the cherry blossoms?"

Waving enthusiastically, Sakura called, "Hi! I'm ready! Just wait a moment!"

Sakura ripped off her apron, wadded it up, and shoved it beneath the counter. She disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a picnic basket. As she breezed out of the tea stand, Sakura called, "Bye, Mama! Bye, Itachi!"

Itachi watched Sakura go and felt neglected.

Since the purpose of the cranes was to provide insight into one's own heart, Itachi ruminated on how Sakura affected his. A pot of tea and fifteen cranes later, Itachi decided that that was the sort of question that one worked up to.

Sakura made him feel good, hurt him, made his life closer to bearable. He felt neglected when she left him behind even though he thought that he still might hate her for betraying his purpose to Yamanaka Inoichi.

Itachi loved Sasuke and Shisui, shaped his plans around them, and took pleasure in their accomplishments. They affected his moods but could not change him or affect his decisions. He would not have spared the clan for Sasuke's sake nor would he have spared Shisui for the sake of the bond that lay between them.

 _If I had killed Shisui, I would've regretted it for the rest of my life,_ Itachi thought unhappily. _I wouldn't have survived Sasuke's death for long. But if I had spared Sasuke and killed all the rest of my clan... I would have... been free._  
  
Itachi went completely still.

Itachi tried to imagine what it might be like to be free. It was an impossibly large idea. Instead, Itachi tried to imagine how he would have felt if the entirety of his clan, save Sasuke and maybe Shisui, were dead. Slowly, tentatively, tendrils of thought, of _imagining,_ unfurled into the vacuum.

A slow, satisfied smile curled Itachi's lips.

But Sakura had taken that away from him, using her innocence, excellent hearing, and Yamanaka alliance against him.

She had _always_ changed Itachi's plans.

In the very beginning, Sakura had made him go back to her mother's cart again and again with her helplessness and her smiles and her bright green eyes. She drew him out of himself after his Root indoctrination, thwarted his final mission, and engaged him with biting, flowers, and cranes. She made him change his mind about avoiding her.

Sakura made Itachi do things that he had never had any intention of doing. Not even Shisui or Sasuke had such power over him.

Itachi disliked that Sakura had that sort of power over him.

Frowning, Itachi dropped a few coins on the counter top, gathered up his things, and left.

To Itachi's relief, his nominations to the clan's Council of Elders went through, mostly because of Fuuma's political clout within the clan. If Fuuma, or anyone else within the Uchiha clan, had known that Itachi had wasted his first New Year's visit on _Sakura,_ a civilian from a civilian family, Itachi would have lost his political allies' support and his nominations would have been blocked. In retrospect, visiting Sakura had been an untenable risk.

It was yet more proof of Sakura's power over him. But, even knowing that she affected his decisions, Itachi wondered _why_ it had been so important to him to visit Sakura first instead of later or even last. Sakura had already greeted her first visitors of the New Year and there was no special importance attached to whom a visitor visited first in the New Year.

And yet, after the cranes, Itachi had not thought twice about visiting Sakura first.

(Thinking about the cranes still made him shiver.)

A pot of tea and thirty cranes later, Itachi decided that he had wanted to visit Sakura first because, at some level, he believed in that old Uchiha tradition. If there really was some benefit to being the Uchiha clan head's first visit of the New Year, he had wanted that benefit to go to Sakura.

At some level, Itachi was _still_ a Uchiha.

Sickened, Itachi quit folding cranes and went to practice, hoping to blot out that terrible realization.

But there was no forgetting the thing that he had realized. To retaliate against the cranes for their unwelcome truth, Itachi refused to fold any more of them, either alone or in Shisui's company.

"Have you given up?" inquired Shisui. He was sitting across from Itachi, faithfully folding his cranes.

"No," Itachi replied tersely, without looking up from his expense reports.

"Are you folding them elsewhere?"

"No."

Shisui made a soft, noncommittal noise. Eventually, he said, "I fail to see how you are going to get your set of cranes folded. Unless you plan to assign that task to another?"

"That would defeat the purpose of the exercise," Itachi grudgingly admitted.

Shisui nodded, said nothing more on the topic, and continued to be quietly industrious.

Watching Shisui fold his cranes, one after another, was frustrating. It annoyed Itachi so much that he ended up folding several cranes of his own, purely out of self-defense. Then, feeling furious, Itachi folded a few more.

Itachi was a Uchiha.

Even if he had successfully murdered his clan, Itachi would _still_ be a Uchiha.

It was _enraging._

Itachi's next fold was so fierce that he ripped the paper right down the middle.

Shisui helpfully passed him another square of paper without comment.

It took dozens of cranes for Itachi to put aside the disappointing matter of his continued identification as a Uchiha and focus on the question of why he had wanted the honor of the (interim) headman's visit to go to Sakura.  
 _  
It had felt important to visit Sakura first,_ _because **she's** important to me. I wanted my new year to begin with Sakura, de_ _spite how little time I spent not hating her the previous year,_ Itachi thought, frowning. _No, **because** I spent so much time hating her the previous year. And I don't regret risking it at all. The only thing that I regret is losing my opportunity to be free of the Uchiha._

Itachi wondered why Sakura had stopped him.

Itachi was folding his three hundred and seventy-eighth crane when Iruka and Hideki-sensei arrived for their bi-monthly team lunch. Itachi, who looked forward to sharing meals with his old teammates, always arrived at the meeting places early. Iruka and Hideki-sensei usually arrived nearly precisely on time. And, as usual, Hana was running late.

"Not you too," groaned Iruka as he flopped into the seat across from Itachi. "Did Sakura put you onto this?"

"Yes," Itachi admitted, unembarrassed. "How did you know?"

"She's been folding them before and between classes all year," Iruka said. "Does this mean that you've made up with her?"

"No."

For a moment, it looked like Iruka was going to shout at Itachi. Then he briefly pressed his lips together before saying, "You haven't been by my apartment in awhile."

"I haven't needed to press anything in awhile," Itachi replied. Thinking of the strings of cranes hanging against the wall and the stuffed tiger carefully tucked away in a cupboard in his room, he mentally added, _Or a need to conceal my precious things from anyone._

"Whatever you're doing or not doing," Hideki interrupted "you look better than you did the last time we met up, Itachi."

"Thank you, sensei," Itachi said. He felt no need to explain that the only changes in his daily life were his renewed contact with Sakura and the cranes.

He would think on it, however.

Sakura's birthday fell on the day that Itachi folded cranes four hundred through four hundred and ten. Even though he was still unhappy with her, Itachi left a pair of dark blue ribbons on her pillow.

The next time that he saw Sakura, which was on the day that he was slated to fold cranes four hundred and twenty through four hundred and thirty, she was wearing his dark blue ribbons in her hair. Sakura was also folding and refolding a square of paper. When she noticed Itachi, Sakura beamed at him, her entire face lighting up. She pocketed the creased and mangled bit of paper.

"Hi, Itachi!"

"Hello, Sakura."

"Want to try our summer special?" she asked as Itachi claimed a stool at the counter. "It's grilled eel with a slice of watermelon and a glass of chilled tea."

"Yes, thank you."

It was a warm day outside and the inside of the tea stand was only slightly cooler. Cooling down with eel, watermelon, and a drink while visiting with his favorite kunoichi in training was a wonderful idea for a summer treat.

Itachi had a mouthful of watermelon when Sakura asked, "Hey Itachi? When your birthday?"

Surprised, Itachi hastily swallowed. "June ninth. Why?"

"So soon?" Sakura asked with open dismay. "I don't even know what to get you!"

"You could make your cranes fly for me again," Itachi quickly offered. He tried not to sound too eager. "During the daylight this time."

The flight of her cranes had been beautiful in the dark but it would probably be equally beautiful during the day. And Itachi very much wished to see it again.

"You liked it that much?" Sakura asked, sounding surprised.

 _"Yes,"_ Itachi said quietly.

It was a beautiful jutsu that she had invented just for him.

"Okay," Sakura said. Her face was very pink but she looked quite happy. "I'll do that, then."

"Thank you."

"Happy birthday, aniki!" shouted Sasuke, jolting Itachi into awareness just before his bedroom door snapped open.

Itachi sat up in bed in time to see Sasuke carefully walk into his room with a breakfast tray and a wide grin. Shisui, who had probably been the one to open the bedroom door, followed Sasuke into Itachi's bedroom. He thoughtfully shut the door behind himself.

Breakfast turned out to be slightly burned scrambled eggs, a very burned piece of toast, and lumpy porridge.

Itachi ate it all and praised the cook. Sasuke turned pink with pleasure.

After breakfast, Shisui promised to take Sasuke to school, leaving Itachi to have a lie in.

Itachi skipped practice and later that morning, after their meeting, Jiraiya-sama presented Itachi with an autographed copy of the first volume of Icha Icha Paradise, complete with full color panels.

Itachi spent most of the afternoon alone in his bedroom with his new book.

Later, Itachi got up again, showered again, and walked across the village to the Haruno tea stand where Sakura was waiting for him with a lopsided cupcake and a wide grin.

"For your birthday!" she chirped. "Mama helped me make it!"

"Thank you," Itachi said, bemused.

Uchiha did not eat sweets.

(The dango were one of his not-so-secret vices.)

Itachi discovered that he loved vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting.

While he practically inhaled his treat, Sakura and her mother put together his takeout order and, when it was time to leave, Sakura left with him. She tried to carry his order but Itachi was having none of that.

"But it's your birthday," she argued.

"I'm restricted to the village for the foreseeable future," he informed Sakura as he took the boxes and bags from her arms. "Not dead."

At home, Sakura laid out their supper on the table and then followed Itachi back to his bedroom where, in the light of the setting sun, she once again made her wishes take flight on paper wings.

Watching the cranes dip and soar around him, their colorful papers flashing and blazing in the dying light, was just as amazing as watching them soar by lantern light.

Itachi was still smiling when he walked Sakura back to the tea stand.

It was his best birthday ever.

Itachi was sitting in the Haruno family's tea stand, folding his four hundred and sixty-first crane, when he asked, "Why did you report me to the Yamanaka clan's headman? There were other authorities available, including ANBU, the military police, and my own clan."

While it was a valid question, it was not what Itachi had originally intended to ask Sakura.

"Ino's my best friend," Sakura replied, without looking away from the eels that were gently sizzling on her little grill.

Sakura roughly wiped a white cloth across her face, blotting away the worst of her sweat. She draped the cloth over her shoulder and leaned back, away from the eels sizzling on her miniature grill, before adding, "I wish that I'd thought to ask Ino's dad not to hurt you, though."

"For your purposes, he was a good choice," replied Itachi, feeling ambivalent about Sakura's discomfort. He did not want to lie to her - Inoichi _had_ hurt him - but it had not been unduly or for the pleasure of it.

For the first time, Itachi wondered if Sakura had been upset when he was in the hospital. He wondered what she would say if she knew that he regretted his failure, not for Danzo's purposes but for his own.

 _"Why_ did you report me?" Itachi said, asking his original question instead of his new ones.

Sakura actually looked up from her work.

"Because you were in big trouble! You were talking about secret societies and rebellions and the village being in danger! Shisui said that he murdered some Rika-girl! _You were going to murder Shisui and steal his eyeball!"_  
  
"None of that involved you!"

"Of course, it involved me!" Sakura yelled, ignoring the thin plumes of black smoke beginning to waft off of the eels. "I live in this village! You're my friend! Shisui was eating in my mother's tea stand! How was I not involved?"

Furious, Itachi hopped off of his stool and stormed out of the tea stand.

On Sasuke's birthday, they ate BLTs for breakfast.

Then, because Sasuke was desperate for training, Itachi spent the morning helping his little brother with his taijutsu, even though it made Itachi's heart ache.

Shisui got takeout for lunch - onigiri, grilled eel, cherry tomatoes, watermelon, and chilled jasmine tea - and afterwards, Itachi took Sasuke to visit with their parents. Sasuke tried to be brave but he ended up crying, despite their parents' vast disapproval.

Between Sasuke's show of weakness and their open disapproval of Itachi, it was not a good visit.

By the time that they finally returned to the house, Shisui had made dinner - another tomato dish - and as per Itachi's instructions gone out to buy Sasuke a vanilla cupcake with chocolate frosting for his birthday. He had also laid out Sasuke's wrapped gifts on the table.

Sasuke picked at dinner despite its many tomatoes and eyed his cupcake distrustfully.

"Try it," Itachi encouraged. "It's delicious."

Sasuke took a bite, grimaced, and put the cupcake down again.

"Too sweet," he grunted, pulling his dinner back to him.

So while Sasuke slowly ate his supper, Itachi helpfully gobbled up his cupcake.

Thankfully, Sasuke seemed to like his new clan jacket and jutsu scroll better.

It was probably Sasuke's worst birthday to date and that, despite getting to eat Sasuke's cupcake, made Itachi feel bad.

"Don't worry about it," Shisui advised after they put Sasuke to bed. "They only get worse. He's got to toughen up."

Itachi, who had recently had his best birthday ever, bit the inside of his lip and said nothing.

But, when he heard the sounds of Sasuke crying into his pillow, Itachi went in to comfort his foolish younger brother and murmur promises to him about next year being better.

For Sasuke's sake, Itachi hoped that it would be.

Several weeks, and about a hundred and fifty cranes later, Itachi admitted to himself that, perhaps, from her perspective, Sakura had possessed an interest in his and Shisui's activities. While Sakura may not have done the best thing, she had no doubt thought that she was doing the right thing for him, Shisui, and the village.

Truth, even if it was only with one's self, was a bitter pill to swallow.

Itachi wanted to give up his crane folding and go practice or glower at Sakura but, with Shisui sitting next him, quietly and industriously folding his cranes, Itachi forced himself to persevere in his folding.

He hated every moment of it.

It took another hundred cranes for Itachi to re-frame his thoughts.  
 __  
Even if I'd succeeded in Danzo's intent, my life would still have been hard and unhappy, albeit in different ways, Itachi thought as he folded his six hundred and fifty-fifth crane. _I'm not convinced that everything is going to work out, much less with the greatest good to the village, but Sakura tried to do what was right for everyone. And even though I dislike how things are, not everything is terrible. Shisui is alive, Sasuke doesn't hate me, and I can visit Sakura any time I like. And I'm not a missing nin._  
  
They were small but precious things. Itachi hoped that they could be enough.

While folding his seven hundred and twenty-fifth crane, Itachi decided that those four things - Sasuke, Shisui, Sakura, and not being a missing nin - were _not_ enough.

Itachi folded fifteen cranes while he deicded what to do and another twenty while he shaped his words in his own mind. Then he went to look for Sakura.

She was not studying at the tea stand or in the academy's library but she _was_ studying in her bedroom, the site of their last attempt to fight with each other.

Standing at the center of her room, his feet shoulder width apart and his hands tucked neatly at the small of his back, Itachi took a deep breath and announced, "I'm angry with you, Sakura,"

At her desk, Sakura startled, squeaked, and dropped her pen. She whipped around to look at him. Sakura's eyes were wide, the fear fading from them as soon as she visually located Itachi.

Continuing with his speech, Itachi said, "And I've been angry with you since the hospital. I think I hated you last year and I think I might still hate you."

Sakura looked first surprised, then hurt and confused. Tentatively, she asked, "The ANBU hospital?"

"Yes."

"If you're still mad at me, why did you let me catch you in your room on New Year's Eve?"

"Curiosity," Itachi replied, telling a half-truth. "You were coming around all the time and leaving paper cranes everywhere."

Triumph flashed across her face, there and gone in an instant. It was disquieting to Itachi. All that Sakura said though was, "Thank you for telling me."

Itachi watched Sakura expectantly.

She stared back at him.

"Now what?" he asked impatiently.

"Do you feel better?"

"No."

"Do you want to tell me all of the reasons that you've been mad at me?"

"No." Itachi hesitated a moment, then asked, "Unless it will help?"

"Most people do it," Sakura replied, as if it was common to find one's self explaining a social interaction that most of Konohagakure no Sato's children could successfully navigate. Itachi resented her matter of fact attitude. He was also grateful for it. "I always feel better when I tell someone why I'm upset with them."

Itachi considered that carefully before he asked, "Have you ever been angry with me?"

"Yes."

Startled, Itachi demanded, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I did. Don't you remember New Year's day?"

He did, now that she mentioned it. Thinking back on it, Itachi decided to skip the slapping part and moved on to saying, "You interfered with my mission and I hate it that you did that. I hate that I spent time in an ANBU holding cell. I hate my clan, I hate that I'm their headman, and I hate that I'm still an Uchiha. And, except for Sasuke and Shisui, I hate that they're still alive."

Itachi took a dark, vindictive pleasure in Sakura's open horror.

Finally, Sakura said, "Even if I'd let you kill everybody that you wanted to, you'd still be Uchiha Itachi."

"I know that _now,"_ Itachi grumbled, glaring at Sakura bad-temperedly.

"Who do you want to be?" she asked.

"I don't know," Itachi admitted. Looking away from her, he added, "But not Uchiha Itachi."

A long, uncomfortable silence stretched between them. Finally, Sakura asked, "Why do you hate your clan? Are they unfriendly to you too?"

Looking back at Sakura, Itachi said, "Yes, they are. But I don't like a lot of things about them."

"Like what?"

After hesitating for a moment, Itachi finally offered, "They're very... proud. Too proud. They're arrogant."

Sakura nodded, as if it was perfectly acceptable to say such things about the Uchiha clan, and said, "There are Uchiha fans on everything in your family's ghetto. It's weird and kind of braggy."

Turning to face her more fully, Itachi added, "They're stuck in the past. They refuse to look towards the future."

"They look at me funny. Sort of sideways?"

"They believe that the clan owns everyone who is born into it, even though that's just a quirk of fate."

Excitedly, Sakura offered, "They're snobs who throw away Valentine's chocolates, won't come look at cherry blossoms, and won't even talk to the rest of us."

"They treat the less talented members of the clan badly."

"And it's always all about them! Ino's good at taijutsu but the taijutsu master only praises the Uchiha kids!"

"They push too hard. And if you ever disappoint them, they'll throw you away."

"And they're too neat," Sakura added enthusiastically. "Your family's ghetto always makes me feel small and dirty and unwanted."

"Me too," Itachi agreed, smiling ruefully.

"Pfft, you're pretty perfect yourself, Itachi," Sakura said, robbing Itachi of his burgeoning good humor. Hurt, he drew away from Sakura, who scrambled out of her chair and rushed at him.

"Wait, wait," she exclaimed. "Don't be like that! Just let me-"

Itachi slowed and let Sakura catch his sleeve.

"Lean down for a moment, Itachi," she ordered, while tugging on his sleeve.

Despite his better instincts, Itachi did as Sakura said. He held still and allowed her to clumsily work the tie out of his hair. Then, giggling, she scrubbed her hands through his hair, messing it up and sending it everywhere.

Tendrils of hair hanging in his face, Itachi straightened and began combing his fingers through his hair, shoving it out of his face and trying to reorder it, when Sakura exclaimed, "There! You don't look like a Uchiha at all!"

Itachi's hands stilled. Then, he smiled. It was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to him.

That summer, Sakura was not always at the stand when Itachi visited it. And sometimes, even if she was there, a crowd of academy students would come by to take her swimming, tree climbing, picnicking, or out to practice. Sasuke, who seemed to prefer the company of their Uchiha cousins, was never among Sakura's group of friends.

But, when Sakura was in the tea stand and not busy, she folded and refolded a square of paper. Once, Itachi asked her what she was doing.

"I'm figuring out how to fold a shark," Sakura replied, while frowning down at her hands. "Samemaru's decided that it's his favorite animal so I want to learn how to fold one for him."

"Samemaru... Is that the blue boy with the shark's teeth?"

"Yes!" Sakura said with a quick, bright smile. Evidently, she both liked the boy and liked that Itachi remembered him. "He and Sai are moving up to their proper form next year. I'll miss sitting with them but I'm glad that they're doing so well."

Itachi did not remember his peers being so positive regarding his own meteoric rise through the ranks. Tentatively, he asked, "Will you still be their friend?"

"Of course!" Sakura exclaimed, looking shocked that he had even asked. "We all pinkie swore that we would be! And Ino said that Fu'll probably still come around, even though he refused to promise. She says that he secretly likes us."

"Oh," murmured Itachi, wondering what he had done wrong. Outside of Shisui and Sakura, the only friends that Itachi had ever made were his genin teammates and he had been assigned to them. "That's good."

Beaming, Sakura nodded at him.

Remembering Sakura's story about being bullied when she first started the academy, Itachi wondered how she had become so popular. He also wondered why there were so many Root children in her circle of friends.

Itachi decided not to ask.

Instead, he enjoyed his visit with Sakura and tried to worry about his coming wish as little as possible.

Having folded eight hundred and two cranes in pursuit of enlightenment, Itachi was beginning to remember what he wished.

Itachi had known what he wanted when he was nine years old. He had ignored, buried, and forgotten it, but he had never discarded the hope of it.

Itachi had always been precocious. But, for the moment, he was happy pretending to be like everyone else.

It was autumn and the entire forest looked like it was on fire, particularly in a stiff breeze, when Shisui slammed into Itachi's office for the sole purpose of glaring at Itachi. He was visibly irate.

"Is Sasuke well?" Itachi asked, his thoughts immediately going towards his younger brother. Shisui had been tasked with walking him and their younger cousins home from the academy.

"Yes," Shisui bit out. "Did you tell your civilian when my birthday was?"

"Yes," Itachi replied. "It came up when I was telling her about Sasuke's birthday."

On his birthday, Shisui had left the house before dawn and not returned until mid-morning the next day. Itachi and Sasuke had taken the hint and not celebrated the day.

"She made me cookies," Shisui snarled and then stormed out of the room again before Itachi could ask what type of cookies, whether or not Shisui had liked them, and how Sakura had gotten them to him.

That was the final word that Shisui was willing to say or hear on the topic and, mindful of his cousin's privacy, Itachi refrained from asking Sakura about the cookies.

But he wanted to.

"Can you come to the Kikyo shrine with me tomorrow?" Itachi asked Sakura one afternoon.

Sakura, who had been folding paper napkins into animal shapes, looked up at him. "Maybe. Why?"

"You said that we had to put the cranes outside to let our wishes out into the world."

"Did you finish?" Sakura squeaked excitedly.

"Yes."

"Oh! I'm so glad!" Sakura beamed at him. "Let me go ask my mama!"

She disappeared into the kitchen for a few minutes and then reappeared, still beaming, and nodded at him. Itachi stiffly returned her smile.

Itachi's wish was as impossible now as it had been when he was nine but he was finally ready to admit to its existence.

They hung their strings of cranes among the wooden prayer plaques. Even though he hated the cold, Itachi took a few steps back and stood with Sakura, admiring the bright strings of folded paper as they fluttered and flew in the autumn wind.

"What did you wish?" Itachi asked.

"I rely on you and Ino a lot," Sakura replied. "You're both so strong and sure and - and so much bigger than everything else. So my wish is to be strong enough to stand up on my own and be brave and take care of myself. I want to be equal to you both."

Itachi stared at Sakura, stunned, while she fiddled with her red hair ribbon and smiled at him awkwardly.

"What did you wish, Itachi?"

Itachi took a deep, fortifying breath. He let it out slowly. Finally, his voice low, he admitted, "I want to be happy. And I don't think that will happen while I'm - while I'm a shinobi. I can't stop being Uchiha Itachi but I _can_ stop being a shinobi. So that's my wish. I want to retire and do something else. Something that makes me happy."

Itachi held his breath, waiting for Sakura to scold him for wanting to give up and retire before he had even peaked as a shinobi.

"That's a great wish!" Sakura hurried to assure him, her tone bright and bracing. Her small hand reached out and found his. It was terribly cold. "What do you want to do instead?"

"I don't know."

"That's okay!" Sakura squeezed his hand. "You'll figure it out!"

"Yeah," Itachi agreed, feeling buoyed by Sakura's faith in him. He tucked their joined hands into one of his jacket pockets. "I think so too."  



End file.
